Dimitris C. Lymberopoulos

ELPIDA: a general architecture for medical imaging systems supporting telemedicine applications

During the next years, profound changes are expected in computer and communication technologies that will offer the medical imaging systems (MIS) industry a challenge to develop advanced telemedicine applications of high performance. Medical industry, vendors, and specialists need to agree on a universal MIS structure that will provide a stack of functions, protocols, and interfaces suitable for coordination and management of high-level image consults, reports, and review activities. Doctors and engineers have worked together to determine the types, targets, and range of such activities within a medical group working domain and to posit their impact on MIS structure. As a result, the fundamental MIS functions have been posed and organized in the form of a general MIS architecture, denoted as ELPIDA. The structure of this architecture was kept as simple as possible to allow its extension to diverse multimode operational schemes handling medical and conversational audiovisual information of different classes. The fundamentals of ELPIDA and pulmonary image diagnostic aspects have been employed for the development of a prototype MIS.

Salivary Immunoglobulin A Production in Chronic Bronchitis Patients Given an Orally Administered Bacterial Extract

The concentration of secretory immunoglobulin A (IgA) has been measured by the immunodiffusion method in 28 chronic bronchitis patients (group A) and in 11 comparable patients receiving corticosteroid therapy (0.5 mg/kg/day prednisone; group B). The measurements have been taken before and after oral administration of Broncho-Vaxom which is an extract of bacteria that usually cause infection of the respiratory tract. The mean concentration of secretory IgA in the saliva was increased by over 130% after the 10-day administration of the preparation to group A patients. This increase was statistically significant between the 12th and 40th day after the beginning of the treatment (p < 0.001). It fell to initial levels after 1 month in 15 patients (group A2) who received a single treatment course. In 13 patients (group A1) who received a second treatment course, beginning 1 month after termination of the first course, the high concentration of IgA in saliva persisted for at least 3 months. The saliva IgA was increased by over 35% in 11 chronic bronchitis patients (group B) who received corticosteroid therapy. In this group of patients the rise of IgA levels began later than in group A. The IgA fell to initial level after 1 month in 5 patients (group B2) who received a single treatment course. In 6 patients (group B1) who received a second treatment course the high concentration persisted longer. The saliva level of IgA in groups A and A1 was higher than in groups B and B1 (p < 0.05 and p < 0.001, respectively). No differences of IgA in the saliva between groups A2 and B2 were found during the study.

Image processing on compressed data for medical purpose

This paper proposes a new service element (SE) of the OSI presentation layer, that contains functions for multimode medical images manipulation. The order of the image data compression and processing is determined within each mode on the basis of the reduction of total response time of the conferencing system, as well as the amount of transferred data through the underlying network. The introduction of the SE functions within the communication function stack of a conferencing medical system enhances the total performance of the conferencing entities (e.g., workstations, databases, modalities).

Prototype interface facility for intelligent handling and processing of medical image and data

This paper introduces an interface facility (IF) developed within the overall framework of RACE research project. Due to the nature of the project which it has been focused in the Remote Medical Expert Consultation, the involvement of distances, the versatile user advocation and familiarity with newly introduced methods of medical diagnosis, considerable deficiencies can arise. The aim was to intelligently assist the user/physician by providing an ergonomic environment which would contain operational and functional deficiencies to the lowest possible levels. IF, energizes and activates system and application level commands and procedures along with the necessary exemplified and instructional help facilities, in order to concisely allow the user to interact with the system safely and easily at all levels.

A multistage moving image data compression scheme for angiocardiography

This paper deals with the development of a new two stages image data compression scheme, suitable for transmission and storage of medical angiocardiography stream (moving) images. This scheme is implemented by constructing multi — frames (images) matrices and applying on them serially Predictive Coding (DPCM) and Transform Coding (Discrete Cosine Transform). Inside each stage the multi — frame data is divided in several groups which are processed in parallel providing a considerable reduction on saving data and compression — decompression processing time. The above technique has been applied and tested on real time dynamic analysis and diagnosis of the artery stenosis. It is noted that this scheme is applicable in medical workstations handling files or messages based on the ACR-NEMA or PAPYRUS formats.

A prototype knowledge based diagnosis support system in pneumonology

This paper presents a prototype system that intelligently assists doctors of medicine and trainee students through diagnosis process. The diagosis support process is controlled by a special manager consisting of data handling and manipulating algorithms, system management tasks. control and security mechanisms. A medical data evaluator has been developed, overseeing activities involved in data evaluation, supported by the knowledge base inferential capabilities.

Implementation of a rec and training teleworking service into GSM

The introduction of fully digital medical information systems in hospitals will result in a number of changes in the clinical work practice. The acceptance of new technologies will decisively depend on the design of medical purpose workstations and specilized medical communication networks. This paper is focused on a new mobile teleworking communication service which supports Remote Expert Consultation (REC) and training facilities, according to the medical n d s .

Iiippocrates: a new software package for medical imaging applications

The display and manipulation of medical images is ;in important part of PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication Systems). Physicians handle the patient data by employing special displaying and processing techniques. The present paper studies and analyzes a sophisticated and flexible medical purpose library of image processing routines. Because the access and manipulation of medical images requires different functionalities, HIPPOCRATES contains a lot of advanced routines which perform low level and high level image processing operations, while their modular structure helps in the development of any image related applications.

Traffic analysis of a medical multimedia communication network

Within the framework of the integration of medical information environment (MIE), special groupware multimedia services (GMS) should be developed. The application of GMSs to specially designed medical communication networks (MCN) creates an integrated user collaboration scheme for supporting and handling special medical cases. The present paper deals with the study and analysis of the traffic performance of a private multimedia ISDN MCN with a dynamic bandwidth allocation.

New medical communication service for teleradiology application

This paper presents a new medical communication service which supports consultation procedures in the modern tele-radiology. The systems perspectives and requirements are studied and analyzed by considering an interactive communication environment, which consists of geographically distributed entities working together and channels for either synchronous or asynchronous inter-communication.