Routing and storage within a computer network

• US 20020035638A1
• Filed: 07/24/2001
• Published: 03/21/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 07/25/2000
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Acuo Technologies, LLC (Kofax Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Acuo Technologies, LLC (Kofax Incorporated)
• Inventors: Kingsbury, Dale Philip, Romatoski, Jeffrey Allen, Gendron, David Pierre, Sitka, Larry Robert
• Application Number:
  US09/911,847
• Publication Number:
  US 20020035638A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/238
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 30/20 for handling medical images, e.g. DICOM, HL7 or PACS
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/00 Routing or path finding of packets in data switching networks routing or path finding in wireless networks H04W40/00
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/306 Route determination based on the nature of the carried application
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/54 Organization of routing tables
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/06 specially adapted for file transfer, e.g. file transfer protocol [FTP]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/12 specially adapted for proprietary or special-purpose networking environments, e.g. medical networks, sensor networks, networks in vehicles or remote metering networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/563 Data redirection of data network streams
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/564 Enhancement of application control based on intercepted application data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/565 Conversion or adaptation of application format or content adding application control or application functional data H04L67/561
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/568 Storing data temporarily at an intermediate stage, e.g. caching
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/26 Special purpose or proprietary protocols or architectures network applications for proprietary or special purpose networking environments H04L67/12
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 69/329 in the application layer [OSI layer 7]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/40 Network security protocols

Abstract

A router includes a computer-readable medium storing routing information mapping destinations to routes within a network. A storage manager software module executing within an operating environment provided by the router receives a network communication including an asset having a pixel data and non-pixel data, and stores the asset to a storage device. A validation software module validates the non-pixel data in parallel with the storage of the asset. A routing module forwards the storage asset to a network destination in accordance with the routing information upon the validation of the non-pixel data.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving a network communication including an asset having a pixel data and non-pixel data;

storing the asset and validating the non-pixel data in parallel; and

forwarding the storage asset upon validating the non-pixel data

2. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving a network communication comprises:

storing the asset in a ringtail buffer while receiving the network communication; and

instantiating a validation software module and a storage manager software module, wherein the validation software module and the storage manager receive the asset from the ringtail buffer in parallel.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

receiving the network communication with multiple software modules; and

storing the asset and validating the non-pixel data with different software modules.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the non-pixel data comprises medical data and the pixel data comprises medical images.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the medical asset data comprises patient information, session information and study information

6. The method of claim 4, wherein validating the non-pixel data comprises syntactically and semantically validating a number of DICOM tags within the non-pixel data.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein validating the non-pixel data includes issuing a reconciliation event when the non-pixel data is invalid.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein storing the pixel data comprises buffering the storage asset to a local storage medium.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein forwarding the network communication upon validating the asset comprises initiating and outbound network communication prior to receiving all of the pixel data.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the network communication comprises receiving a number of packets from a network, and where storing the pixel data and validating the non-pixel data commences after receiving a first portion of the packets.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein forwarding the network communication comprises forwarding the network communication to a plurality of storage systems in parallel.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the non-pixel data comprises medical data and the pixel data comprises medical images

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the medical asset data comprises patient information, session information and study information

15. The method of claim 14, wherein validating the non-pixel data comprises semantically and syntactically validating a number of DICOM tags within the non-pixel data.

17. The router of claim 16 further including a computer-readable medium buffering the network communication in a ringtail buffer, wherein the storage manager software module and the validation software module read the network communication from the ringtail buffer.

18. The router of claim 16, wherein the non-pixel data comprises medical data and the pixel data comprises medical images.

19. The router of claim 18, wherein the medical asset data comprises patient information, session information and study information

20. The router of claim 18, wherein the validation software module syntactically and semantically validates a number of DICOM tags within the non-pixel data.

21. The router of claim 16, wherein the validation software module issues a reconciliation event when the non-pixel data is invalid.

22. The router of claim 16, wherein the routing module forwards the network communication to a plurality of storage systems in parallel.

24. The method of claim 23, wherein selecting a plurality of routes comprises selecting routes to a plurality of archive systems.

25. The method of claim 23, further comprising:

storing a set of routing rules;

comparing at least a portion of the data to the set of routing rules; and

selecting a plurality of routes from the routing information based on the destination information and a result of the comparison.

26. The method of claim 23, wherein the network comprises a medical imaging network and the network communication complies with the DICOM protocol, and further wherein storing routing information comprises storing routing information mapping Application Entity Names (AENames) to routes within the medical imaging network.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein selecting a plurality of routes from the routing information comprises comparing an AEName defined within the network communication to the AEName defined within the routing information.

28. The method of claim 23, wherein the network communication complies with the DICOM protocol, and further wherein comparing at least a portion of the medical asset data comprises:

parsing the medical asset data to identify a set of DICOM tags and corresponding data; and

assessing a routing rule from the set of routing rules based on the DICOM tags and corresponding data.

29. The method of claim 23, wherein storing a set of routing rules comprises storing an XML-based set of rules, wherein the rules conform to a user-defined grammar for routing the medical asset data.

30. The method of claim 29, further comprising presenting an interface for receiving user input that defines the user-defined grammar.

12. A method comprising:

receiving a number of packets with multiple software modules listening to a single communication socket of a TCP/IP-based network, wherein the packets contain a storage asset having a pixel data and non-pixel data;

selectively process the non-pixel data and the pixel data with separate software modules to store the asset and validate the non-pixel data in parallel as the packets are received; and

forwarding the storage asset to a network destination upon validating the non-pixel data and prior to receiving all of the pixel data.

16. A router comprising:

a computer-readable medium storing routing information mapping destinations to routes within a network; and

a storage manager software module that receives a network communication including an asset having a pixel data and non-pixel data, and stores the asset to a storage device;

a validation software module that validates the non-pixel data in parallel with the storage of the asset; and

a routing module that forwards the storage asset to a network destination in accordance with the routing information upon the validation of the non-pixel data.

23. A method comprising:

storing routing information mapping destinations to routes within a network;

receiving a network communication comprising destination information and a storage asset;

storing a plurality of outbound network communications in a plurality of queues, wherein the outbound network communications include references to the storage asset;

selecting a plurality of routes from the routing information; and

forwarding the network communications according to the selected routes in parallel.