With the widespread dissemination of picture archiving and communication systems (PACSs) in hospitals, the amount of imaging data is rapidly increasing. Effective image retrieval systems are required to manage these complex and large image databases. The authors reviewed the past development and the present state of medical image retrieval systems including text-based and content-based systems. In order to provide a more effective image retrieval service, the intelligent content-based retrieval systems combined with semantic systems are required.
Radiology Information Systems ; Semantics

Hospital Information Systems ; Humans ; Radiology Information Systems

How to use clustering techniques in PACS system is introduced. Two kinds of cluster solution to configure PACS system is proposed.
Computer Systems ; Radiology Information Systems ; organization & administration

PACS is a long-term and complex systematic project. The system needs support of hardwares and softwares. The functions of the PACS and the context of integration between PACS and other systems must be specified in details. This paper introduces experiences of a PACS on sides of system environment, system technology and system relationships.
Hospital Information Systems ; Radiology Information Systems ; Systems Integration

PURPOSE: Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) is difficult to implement in the best of situations, but evidence is growing that the benefits are significant. The aims of this study are to analyze the current status of full PACS and establish successful installation standard of dental PACS. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Materials and methods were based on the investigation of current working status and installation standard of PACS, and observation of variable issues to installation of dental PACS. RESULTS: By September 30, 2004, full PACS implementations in their facilities were 88.1% in specialized general hospitals (37 installations out of total 42 hospitals), 59.8% in general hospitals (144 installations out of total 241 hospitals), 12.3% in medical hospitals (116 installations out of total 941 hospitals) and 3.6% in dental hospitals (4 installations out of total 110 hospitals) Only 4 university dental hospitals currently have installed and are operating full PACS. Major obstacle to wide spread of dental PACS is initial high investments. CONCLUSIONS: Clinical environments of dental PACS differed from medical situation. Because of characteristic dental practice, the initial investments for dental PACS are generally much greater than those of medical PACS. Also new economic crisis makes users scruple. The best way to overcome these limitations is to establish an economic installation standard for dental PACS. Also the clear technical communication between the customer and the supplier before both sides are committed to the obstacles are critical to its success.
Hospitals, General ; Investments ; Radiology Information Systems

Aiming at the frequent failures in the PACS clinical applications, a continuous availability (CA) image server with triple modular redundancy (TMR) is designed and used for failover at the CPU/memory level. The TMR voter, which is included in the CA image server, is applied to detection of failures. Through UW or FW SCSI interfaces, two mirror-image disks, two RAID controllers and two DLT controllers are respectively connected to the modules in the TMR and a complete CA image server is brought into being. The CA image server will replace the potential single point of failure (SPOF) in the PACS and increases its availability rate to 99.999%. The advantages of the TMR CA image server make itself well suitable for large-scale medical image network and database applications.
Equipment Failure ; Radiology Information Systems ; instrumentation

Picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) has widely been used in many hospitals. Film digitizer has been used in order to create digital image file from conventional plain radiographic films for PACS. In this study, we quantitatively assessed the characteristics of film digitizer for both laser and CCD camera-based type used in Severance hospital. We created three test films to measure the quality of digitized images. The test films were then digitized by both laser and CCD camera-based film digitizer. Finally, the image files were transferred to the PC in which spatial resolution, contrast, and uniformity were evaluated. We also measured digitization time to evaluate the speed of digitizer. Modulation transfer function (MTF) was measured to evaluate the spatial resolution. Contrast was evaluated by measuring of useful range of optical density (OD). Contrast uniformity was calculated by the percentage of difference between minimum and maximum pixel values on the digitized images. Spatial resolution of laser digitizer was ~~5.0cycles/mm, while that of CCD-based unit was ~~1.5cycles/mm of spatial resolution at 10% of MTF. Useful range of OD for CCD unit was ~~77%, while that for laser unit was 100%. Contrast uniformities of laser unit were better than those of CCD-based unit. Digitization time was ~~10sec/film using CCD unit, and ~~60sec/film using LASER unit at film size of 17x14 inches. Laser digitizer can provide relatively higher image quality, while CCD-based unit has the advantage of higher speed than laser unit.
Radiology Information Systems ; X-Ray Film

This article elaborates key points of the PACS and RIS project: its overall planning, implementation step by step, integration of PACS and HIS based on IHE, and the prudent selection of partners and so on.
Hospital Information Systems ; Humans ; Information Storage and Retrieval ; methods ; Radiology Information Systems ; Software ; Systems Integration

In this paper, with B/S application and architecture, an integrated solution of PACS is designed, and the function and application of each part of PACS based on the architecture is introduced. The PACS based on this mode is safe, stable, easy to manage and upgrade and convenient for use in telemedicine.
Computer Systems ; Humans ; Radiology Information Systems ; Research ; Software ; Telemedicine

In this article, based on the analysis on the regional information system's development background and its applications, the construction of the regional medical information system through creating the electronic medical record and the medicine image data centers is proposed, for information resource sharing. And then, the system's software construction and various subsystems functions are mainly introduced. Standardization and the middleware platform are suggested as the effective way of constructing these two data centers in the present situation in our country.
Computer Security ; Computer Systems ; Hospital Information Systems ; Humans ; Medical Records Systems, Computerized ; Radiology Information Systems ; Software