Medical image on the Go!

Abstract

The idea for softcopy viewing of medical image outside the radiology reading room spread among the scientists in various fields for several years. An image could be read on workstation of all types, from desktop across movable to handheld. Benefits are numerous and continue to grow as physicians use them discovering new usage cases. Proposed solutions vary with PACS architecture invasion level, communication and storage image formats, and utilization. We employ JPEG2000 standard because of its high (lossy/lossless) compression ratio with minimal spatial distortion, retrieval-oriented storage, and streaming. It is embedded in PACS as the DICOM Private Data Element containing JPIP parameter string, so-called DICOM2000. The DICOM2000 message is transparent for standard DICOM devices at the slightest level of invasion. Thanks to sophisticated JPEG2000 streaming, medical image becomes suitable for any resolution and quality display and (wireless) networks. The solution is validated on the ACR/NEMA standard test set of PACS images. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.