Matthieu Funk

The OSIRIS User Interface for Manipulating Medical Images

This paper describes the OSIRIS project developed at the University Hospital of Geneva. Its goal is the design of a software to read medical images files stored in the PAPYRUS format and, more important, to display and analyse them in a window based user interface environment. This software is a main part of the PACS project conducted at the Geneva Hospital. OSIRIS has been designed to work on a wide variety of workstations and window systems (Unix systems with Xll and OSF/Motif and Macintoshs). It provides the traditional modes of visualisation (zoom in, zoom out, invert, etc) and allows more specific manipulations such as a movie mode, filters, measure of distances, modification of the color lookup table. OSIRIS allows to display a second window containing the image interpretation report, a window containing some study information and allows to add annotations to an image.

Portable image-manipulation software: what is the extra development cost?

A hospital-wide picture archiving and communication system (PACS) project is currently under development at the University Hospital of Geneva. The visualization and manipulation of images provided by different imaging modalities constitutes one of the most challenging component of a PACS. It was necessary to provide this visualization software on a number of types of workstations because of the varying requirements imposed by the range of clinical uses it must serve. The user interface must be the same, independent of the underlying workstation. In addition to a standard set of image-manipulation and processing tools, there is a need for more specific clinical tools that can be easily adapted to specific medical requirements. To achieve this goal, it was elected to develop a modular and portable software called OSIRIS. This software is available on two different operating systems (the UNIX standard X-11/OSF-Motif based workstations and the Macintosh family) and can be easily ported to other systems. The extra effort required to design such software in a modular and portable way was worthwhile because it resulted in a platform that can be easily expanded and adapted to a variety of specific clinical applications. Its portability allows users to benefit from the rapidly evolving workstation technology and to adapt the performance to suit their needs.

Image manipulation software portable on different hardware platforms: what is the cost?

A hospital wide PACS project is currently under development at the University Hospital of Geneva. The visualization and manipulation of images provided by different imaging modalities constitutes one of the most challenging components of a PACS. Because there are different requirements depending on the clinical usage, it was necessary for such a visualization software to be provided on different types of workstations in different sectors of the PACS. The user interface has to be the same independently of the underlying workstation. Beside, in addition to a standard set of image manipulation and processing tools there is a need for more specific clinical tools that should be easily adapted to specific medical requirements. To achieve operating and windowing systems: the standard Unix/X-11/OSF-Motif based workstations and the Macintosh family and should be easily ported on other systems. This paper describes the design of such a system and discusses the extra cost and efforts involved in the development of a portable and easily expandable software.© (1992) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Distributed architecture for image archival in a hospital-wide PACS

A hospital-wide PACS project is currently under development at the University Hospital of Geneva. This system is based on an open architecture regrouping equipment from multiple vendors in a distributed topology. The image archival is organized in multiple locations geographically distributed in the hospital. These regional archives are logically linked together to provide a virtual access to all images generated from different imaging modalities. A standardized image storage format called PAPYRUS was designed based on ACR-NEMA definitions to unify the image storage and display functionalities. The PACS database is also fully integrated with the concurrent RIS and HIS. Images from different archive servers are hierarchically distributed to other temporary storage space on regional display servers. Clusters of workstations are regrouped around these local servers allowing a more efficient access to the images on local subnetworks. Special software tools were designed for the management of image distribution and maintenance of local storage space. In addition to pre- programmed and rule-based distribution of images to regional display servers, special requests can be posted by the users to initiate the transfer of additional image files from the archive servers to their local display server. The design and implementation of the system will be presented and methodological issues will be discussed. Results from preliminary simulations performed prior to the final implementation will be presented and compared to real measurements performed on the system in operation. The advantages and difficulties of implementing a distributed hierarchical storage of images will be reported.© (1992) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Modular Development of a Hospital Wide Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS)

The PACS under development at the University Hospital of Geneva is a hospital-wide Image Management System for radiological as well as non-radiological medical images which is part of a one of the widest hospital information systems (HIS) in Switzerland (Diogene system). It is based on a multi-vendor open architecture and a set of widely available industry standards, namely: Unix as the operating system, TCP-IP as network protocol and an SQL-based distributed database (INGRES) that handles both the PACS and the HIS. The PACS is based on a distributed architecture of servers of two types: the Archive Servers connected to the sources of images and equipped with large optical disk libraries (Juke Boxes) and Display Servers distributed over the hospital. A standard image storage format was developed based on the ACR-NEMA standard. This file format called the PAPYRUS format, allows to store sets of images as a sequence of ACR-NEMA messages in an “encapsulated” file structure. In order to provide a more uniform user interface on a variety of different workstations a common platform for image display and manipulation called OSIRIS is developed based on X-11 windowing system and OSF/Motif extension. Such a platform is designed to be portable to any computer running Unix and equipped with a graphic display system running X-11. Also because this software is written in the object oriented language C++, it is easily expandable and easily adaptable to different needs and requirements.

The Application of Distributed Artificial Intelligence to Medical Diagnosis

There are many different reasons for adopting a distributed approach to problem solving activities such as medical diagnosis. This paper discusses the various rationales for Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) and gives a brief overview of the MELANIE project. MELANIE is a project which is concerned with the production of two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (protein maps), the interpretation and analysis of these protein maps and subsequent computer assisted medical diagnosis. Having introduced the MELANIE project we then go on to highlight various aspects of the task which may benefit from a DAI approach. We conclude by summarising what has been achieved so far and make a statement of both the short term and long term goals of the project from a DAI perspective.