Data compression method wherein said data comprises noise and information, comprising - an image data acquisition step performed by a camera in order to obtain image data to be compressed, - a parameter determination step allowing to determine pre-compression parameters which are linked to an information loss, - a compression step, and - a storage step, said compression step comprising - a lossy pre-compression for removing some noise of the image data followed by - a lossless compression for compressing the remaining image data, characterized in that - said parameter determination step comprises ∘ a system calibration step using calibration data comprising a number of calibration images each acquired by or simulated for said camera at known radiance of light and outputting the amount of image information that is lost by the compression step as a function of pre-compression parameters, said information loss being represented by the relative increase in the uncertainty associated with the measurement estimate of the radiance of light of said image data after said compression step and a decompression step as compared to the uncertainty of said image data before said compression step, and ° a pre-compression parameter selection step allowing to choose said pre-compression parameters, - said lossy pre-compression being carried out using the pre-compression parameters selected in the pre-compression parameter selection step. - an image data acquisition step performed by a camera in order to obtain image data to be compressed, - a parameter determination step allowing to determine pre-compression parameters which are linked to an information loss, - a compression step, and - a storage step, said compression step comprising - a lossy pre-compression for removing some noise of the image data followed by - a lossless compression for compressing the remaining image data, characterized in that - said parameter determination step comprises ∘ a system calibration step using calibration data comprising a number of calibration images each acquired by or simulated for said camera at known radiance of light and outputting the amount of image information that is lost by the compression step as a function of pre-compression parameters, said information loss being represented by the relative increase in the uncertainty associated with the measurement estimate of the radiance of light of said image data after said compression step and a decompression step as compared to the uncertainty of said image data before said compression step, and ° a pre-compression parameter selection step allowing to choose said pre-compression parameters, ∘ a system calibration step using calibration data comprising a number of calibration images each acquired by or simulated for said camera at known radiance of light and outputting the amount of image information that is lost by the compression step as a function of pre-compression parameters, said information loss being represented by the relative increase in the uncertainty associated with the measurement estimate of the radiance of light of said image data after said compression step and a decompression step as compared to the uncertainty of said image data before said compression step, and ° a pre-compression parameter selection step allowing to choose said pre-compression parameters, - said lossy pre-compression being carried out using the pre-compression parameters selected in the pre-compression parameter selection step. <EOS>