Conduction of tele-3D-computer assisted operations as well as other telemedicine procedures often requires highest
possible quality of transmitted medical images and video. Unfortunately, those data types are always associated with
high telecommunication and storage costs that sometimes prevent more frequent usage of such procedures. We present a
novel algorithm for lossless compression of medical images that is extremely helpful in reducing the telecommunication
and storage costs. The algorithm models the image properties around the current, unknown pixel and adjusts itself to the
local image region. The main contribution of this work is the enhancement of the well known approach of predictor
blends through highly adaptive determination of blending context on a pixel-by-pixel basis using classification technique.
We show that this approach is well suited for medical image data compression. Results obtained with the proposed
compression method on medical images are very encouraging, beating several well known lossless compression methods.
The predictor proposed can also be used in other image processing applications such as segmentation and extraction of
image regions
