INTERACTIVE VIEWING, ASYNCHRONOUS RETRIEVAL, AND ANNOTATION OF MEDICAL IMAGES

• US 20080140722A1
• Filed: 11/20/2007
• Published: 06/12/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 11/20/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Change Healthcare Holdings, LLC (UnitedHealth Group Incorporated)
• Original Assignee: Vivalog LLC (McKesson Corp.)
• Inventors: Jakobovits, Rex
• Application Number:
  US11/943,388
• Publication Number:
  US 20080140722A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/104.1
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 30/20 for handling medical images, e.g. DICOM, HL7 or PACS
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 30/40 for processing medical images, e.g. editing

Abstract

Methods, apparatuses, and articles for interactive viewing, asynchronously retrieving and annotating medical images are described herein. In various embodiments, a client device may retrieve, from a server, a network resource having medical information and associated medical images, with the server initially including only a subset of the medical images. The client device may then facilitate a user in interactive viewing of the retrieved medical images, and asynchronously retrieve additional ones of the medical images from the server as the retrieved medical images are being interactively viewed. In some embodiments, in response to interactive viewing, the client device may request of a server a graphical primitive, the request specifying a graphical primitive type and information associated with the interactive viewing. In response the client device may receive the primitive and may create an annotation layer including the primitive associated with the medical image.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

retrieving, by a client device, from a server through a network, a network resource having medical information and associated medical images, with the server initially including only a subset of the associated medical images with the retrieved network resource; and

facilitating, by the client device, interactive viewing of the medical information by a user, including interactive viewing of the associated medical images, including asynchronously retrieving by the client device additional ones of the associated medical images as the provided medical images are being interactively viewed.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the network resource is a web page including client-side logic and the subset of the associated medical images are organized as a stack.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the client device includes a web browser, the web browser having at least one of a general purpose scripting language interpreter or locally available general purpose graphics/animation services, and the method further comprises controlling the medical images using the general purpose language interpreter or services, or both.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the interactive viewing includes a user interaction, and the user interaction is one of a brightness or contrast adjustment, navigation between images of the subset of images, a zooming or panning action, drawing annotations on one of the subset of images, or saving the annotations.

5. The method of claim 4, the asynchronous retrieving is in response to the user interaction, and the additional ones of the images retrieved are selected by the server based on the user interaction.

6. The method of claim 3, wherein the associated medical images having been transcoded from a predecessor set of the medical images for efficient transfer over the network, the transcoded medical images having a first image format of a first bit rate lower than a second bit rate of a second image format of the predecessor set.

7. The method of claim 3, wherein the interactive viewing comprises magnifying one of the subset of images beyond a threshold, the one of the subset of images having a first resolution, and the method further comprises replacing, by the client device, the one of the subset of images with another image having a second resolution, the first resolution being lower than the second resolution, and the replacing includes asynchronously requesting the other image from server.

8. The method of claim 3, wherein

the subset of images comprises a collection of images, the collection being visually manifested to the user as a set of thumbnail images,

the interactive viewing comprises facilitating the user in browsing to a second collection of images corresponding to the additional ones of the images, and

the asynchronous retrieving comprises retrieving the second collection.

9. The method of claim 3, wherein the interactive viewing comprises resizing, by the user, a window containing one of the subset of images, and the one of the subset of images is dynamically resized to fit the resized window dimensions.

10. The method of claim 3, wherein the interactive viewing comprises adjusting by the user, a setting associated with one or more of the subset of images, and the method further comprises requesting of the server, by the client device, updating of the subset of image with the additional ones of the images based on the adjusted setting.

11. The method of claim 3, wherein the asynchronous retrieving comprises retrieving metadata along with the additional ones of the images, and the method further comprises updating, by the client device, a visual manifestation of the network resource based on the metadata.

12. The method of claim 3, wherein the interactive viewing comprises creating or editing by the user a message associated with the network resource, and the method further comprises asynchronously posting the message to the server.

13. A server comprising:

a processor; and

logic to be operated by the processor to

provide to a client device a network resource having medical information and a subset of associated medical images, the network resource including client-side logic to facilitate interactive viewing of the medical information by a user of the client device,

receive from the client device an asynchronous request for additional ones of the associated medical images, the request including at least one parameter associated with the interactive viewing, and

in response to said receive, provide the additional ones of the associated medical images to the client device, the additional ones of the associated medical images being selected in view of the at least one parameter.

14. The server of claim 13, wherein the network resource is a web page, the subset of the associated medical images are organized as a stack, and the client device includes a web browser, the web browser having at least one of a general purpose scripting language interpreter or locally available general purpose graphics/animation services, and the medical images are configured to be controllable using the general purpose language interpreter or service, or both.

15. The server of claim 14, wherein the logic is further to transcode the associated medical images from a predecessor set of the medical images for efficient transfer over the network, the transcoded medical images having a first image format of a first bit rate lower than a second bit rate of a second image format of the predecessor set.

16. The server of claim 14, wherein the parameter is associated with the interactive viewing, the interactive viewing including a user interaction, and the user interaction is one of a brightness or contrast adjustment, navigation between images of the subset of images, a zooming or panning action, drawing annotations on one of the subset of images, or saving the annotations.

17. The server of claim 16, wherein the logic is further to select the additional ones of the images in view of the parameter.

18. An article of manufacture comprising:

a storage medium; and

a plurality of programming instructions stored on the storage medium and configured to enable a client device to

retrieve from a server, through a network, a network resource having medical information and associated medical images, with the server initially including only a subset of the associated medical images with the retrieved network resource, and

facilitate interactive viewing of the medical information by a user, including interactive viewing of the associated medical images, including asynchronously retrieving by the client device additional ones of the associated medical images as the provided medical images are being interactively viewed.

19. The article of claim 18, wherein

the interactive viewing includes a user interaction, and the user interaction is one of a brightness or contrast adjustment, navigation between images of the subset of images, a zooming or panning action, drawing annotations on one of the subset of images, or saving the annotations, and

the asynchronous retrieving is in response to the user interaction.

20. A method comprising:

facilitating, by a client device, a user interaction with a visually manifested medical image of a network resource, the network resource including client-side logic for managing user interactions;

receiving, by the client device, a user interaction;

in response to receiving the user interaction, asynchronously requesting to a server, by the client device, a graphical primitive, the request specifying a graphical primitive type and information associated with the received user interaction;

receiving, by the client device, the graphical primitive; and

in response to receiving the graphical primitive, creating, by the client device, an annotation layer including the graphical primitive, and associating the annotation layer with the medical image.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein the graphical primitive type is one of a text type, a circle type, a box type, and a line type.

22. The method of claim 20, wherein the graphical primitive is a draggable, scalable image and the network resource is a web page.

23. The method of claim 20, wherein creating the annotation layer includes creating a container element including the received graphic primitive and updating a user-interactive list of container elements to include the created container element, the list enabling hiding or showing of graphical primitives.

24. The method of claim 20, further comprising:

asynchronously requesting, by the client device, to the server that the annotation layer be anchored or collapsed, the requesting including providing the annotation layer to the server to enable the server to save the annotation layer and any other provided layers to a medical image of the network resource; and

receiving, by the client device, from the server, the medical image updated with the annotation layer.