Sparse representation of images acquired from Magnet Resonance Imaging (MRI) has several potential applications. MRI is unique in that the raw images are complex. Complex wavelet transforms (CWT) can be used to produce flexible signal representations when compared to Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). In this work, five different schemes using CWT or DWT are tested for sparse representation of MRI images which are in the form of complex values, separate real/imaginary, or separate magnitude/phase. The experimental results on real in-vivo MRI images show that appropriate CWT, e.g., dual-tree CWT (DTCWT), can achieve sparsity better than DWT with similar Mean Square Error.
