CODEWITHSUNDEEP
.netimageimage-processingcomputer-vision
user334911
user334911

Reputation:

Bug with at least potential dangers, what do you do?

I recently found out there is a bug in the way .Net decodes monochrome jpegs. It appears possible to me that the bug could have serious real-world consequences in certain cases because medical images are often monochrome. The image is only mildly degenerated, but image processing done to automatically enhance the quality of such images could potentially degrade the image due to the nature of the bug. I know because I do image processing and techniques I was using to improve our images, which are not medical in nature, were not coming out right - and in some cases it looked worse and I am sure other techniques could actually degrade the image.

In what I assume are rare cases where computer vision techniques are used to aid in medical diagnosis, such techniques are also likely to be thrown way off (e.g. since the gradients in a dithered image with only 16 shades of gray are going to be really different than those in a standard image).

I would like to "let those whose program might be affected know" but how can I do that? My company does not do any medical work, and I don't know anyone that does.

You can find my original question about the bug here. Don't bother upvoting it so no one thinks I am just garnishing rep. I would really like to know about what can be done about this.

P.S. I think, but could be totally wrong, that much, but not all, medical imaging is HDR, but jpeg will still compress 12 bit HDR. I would tend to assume it's most likely to be put into jpeg for storage and later retrieval or transmission over a network (including from a wireless device) as such images are likely to be very high res.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 65

Answers (1)

Jackson Pope
Jackson Pope

Reputation: 14660

I used to work for a company that did a lot of medical processing of images, but to be honest they mostly used TIFFs because they weren't compressed.

If you're sure you've found a bug in the .Net libraries, report it to Microsoft on their forums: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/netdevelopment/

Upvotes: 3

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