PACS Optimization Techniques

• US 20100246981A1
• Filed: 03/30/2009
• Published: 09/30/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/30/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Global Care Quest, Inc. (Karl Storz Se & Co. Kg), Regents of the University of California (University of California)
• Original Assignee: Regents of the University of California (University of California)
• Inventors: Platt, Robert C. III, Hu, Xiao, Zlatev, Vesselin, Buxey, Farzad D.
• Granted Patent: US 8,634,677 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 382/232
• 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

Some embodiments provide a method and system for efficiently transferring medical images. Some embodiments receive a medical image in a first platform dependent format of a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS). The first platform dependent format is one that is accessible by a first format compliant device that includes a library that specifies how to decode the first format. Some embodiments transform the medical image from the first format to a second format. The second format includes decoded content of the first format that is viewable on a first format non-compliant device. The transformed image is then passed to the device for viewing. Additionally, some embodiments efficiently transfer medical images by identifying image settings for one or more devices and by passing requested images that are optimized by resizing the images according to the image settings of the requesting device.

Claims

1. A method for efficiently transferring medical images, the method comprising:

receiving a medical image in a first platform dependent format of a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) that is accessible by a first format compliant device, wherein the first format compliant device comprises platform dependent resources for decoding said first format;

transforming the medical image from the first format to a second format comprising decoded content of the first format for viewing on a first format non-compliant device; and

passing said transformed medical image to the device for viewing.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the medical image comprises image data and identification information, said identification information in the first format, wherein transforming the medical image comprises generating the identification information in the second format.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein passing the transformed medical image comprises passing the image data associated with the medical image and the identification information in the second format to the device.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein passing the transformed medical image comprises replacing the identification information in the first format with the identification information in the second format before passing the medical image.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the first format non-compliant device does not include the platform dependent resources for decoding the first format.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the first format non-compliant device comprises a standard browser for viewing the transformed image that is passed to the device.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the first format non-compliant device comprises a standard image viewing application for viewing the transformed image that is passed to the device.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the first format is the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) format.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the second format is the Extensible Markup Language (XML) format.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the medical image in the first format comprises image data and identification information associated with the image data encoded according to the first format, wherein passing the medical image comprises passing image data of the medical image and a parsed subset of the identification information in the second format, wherein said passing comprises passing less data than passing the image data and the identification information using the first platform dependent format.

11. A system comprising:

an image store for storing a plurality of digital images in a platform dependent first format; and

an image optimization device communicatively coupled to the image store for transferring said digital images from the image store to a plurality of devices in at least one platform independent second format, wherein the plurality of devices are unable to process the first format.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the image optimization device is further for modifying content of a digital image based on specifications of a particular device to optimally transfer said digital image to the particular device.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein said specifications of the particular device define a display resolution and modifying content of the digital image comprises down-sampling a resolution of said digital image to the display resolution of the particular device before transferring said digital image to the particular device.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein modifying content of the digital image further comprises compressing said digital image before transferring said digital image to the particular device.

15. The system of claim 11 further comprising a server communicatively coupled to the plurality of devices, the image store, and the image optimization device, said server for passing new images received from the devices to the image store for storage and the image optimization device for preprocessing, wherein the image optimization device preprocesses new images by converting the platform dependent first format of the new images to the platform independent second format as the new images are stored to the image store.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the server is further for processing requests from the plurality of devices to access said digital images stored in the image store, wherein the server processes a request for a digital image by directing the image optimization device to convert the first format of the digital image to the second format when the digital image has not been preprocessed by the image optimization module.

17. The system of claim 11, wherein the image store is a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) of a healthcare provider.

18. The system of claim 11, wherein the platform dependent first format is the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) format.

19. The system of claim 11, wherein the platform independent second format is Extensible Markup Language (XML) format.

20. A method for efficiently transferring medical images from a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) that stores a single instance of each medical image to a plurality of devices for viewing the medical images using a plurality of display settings, the method comprising:

receiving said medical images for storage in the PACS;

identifying a plurality of image settings corresponding to image settings for the plurality of devices that display said medical images;

generating a set of resized images for each received medical image based on the identified image settings; and

for each identified image setting, generating a resized image of a received medical image based on the identified image setting

passing a resized image of a medical image to a device having image settings corresponding to image settings of the resized image to reduce image data that is passed to the device.

21. The method of claim 20 further comprising compressing the set of generated resized images.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein passing the resized image comprises passing a compressed resized image to the device.

23. The method of claim 20, wherein passing the resized image comprises passing a first resized image of a first image to a device having a first image setting and passing a second resized image of the first image to a device having a second image setting.

24. The method of claim 20, wherein each image setting comprises a different display resolution of a particular device of the plurality of devices.

25. A method for efficiently accessing medical images of a hospital information system (“

HIS”

), the method comprising;

identifying an image requested by a particular device comprising a plurality of display properties;

preprocessing said image to (i) reformat a DICOM header associated with the image into XML, and (ii) to resize said image according to display properties of said device; and

transmitting the preprocessed image to the device for viewing.

26. The method of claim 25, wherein preprocessing comprises compressing the resized image to reduce transfer time when transmitting the image to the device.