Image data compression is an enabling technology for teleradiology and picture archive and communication systems. Compression decreases the time and cost of image transmission and the requirements for image storage. Wavelets, discovered in 1987, constitute a new compression technique that has been described in radiologic publications but, to our knowledge, no previous studies of its use have been reported. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the application of wavelet-based compression technology to digitized radiographs.