Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re calculating, but this math seems wildly off. Sincerely don’t understand an alternate numerical point being made.

> Given a 16-bit, 512 x 512 x 100 slice CT scan, you're looking at 2^16 * 26214400

65536^(512*512) or 65536 multiplied by itself 262144 times for each image. An enormous number. Whether or not assume replacement (duplicates) is moot.

> That's 100 * 26214400 = 262,440,000

There are 100^(512*512) 512x512 100-level grayscale images alone or 100 to the 262144 power - 100 multiplied 262144 times. Again how you paring down a massive combinatoric space to a reasonable 262 mil?