Interpretation support system

• US 9,002,075 B2
• Filed: 04/02/2008
• Issued: 04/07/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 04/03/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation (Canon Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation (Canon Inc.), Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba (Toshiba Corporation)
• Inventors: Niwa, Kenichi, Minakuchi, Maki
• Primary Examiner(s): Fuelling, Michael
• Application Number:
  US12/061,340
• Publication Number:
  US 20080249807A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,561 Days
• Field of Search: 705/3
• US Class Current: 382/128
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 15/00 ICT specially adapted for medical reports, e.g. generation or transmission thereof
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 30/20 for handling medical images, e.g. DICOM, HL7 or PACS

Abstract

A medical image storage unit stores medical image. A medical image observation terminal adds interpretation information for medical image and the creator name for interpretation information to the supplementary information of medical image. A reference terminal obtains medical image from the medical image storage unit in order to display medical image. An evaluation management unit instructs the reference terminal to display an evaluation input screen for medical image to allow an evaluation to be entered if the interpretation information has been added to the supplementary information of medical image obtained in the reference terminal, and it then adds evaluation to the supplementary information of medical image stored in the medical image storage unit after receiving an input from the reference terminal and transmits evaluation to the destination for the evaluation that corresponds to the creator name added to the supplementary information of medical image.

Claims

1. An interpretation support system, comprising:

a medical images capturing device configured to obtain medical images from a patient;

a medical image storage configured to store a medical image of the medical images obtained from the medical image capturing device and supplementary information attached to the medical image;

a medical image observation terminal configured to receive from a creator and to add, to the supplementary information stored in the medical image storage, interpretation information comprising comments or annotations regarding said medical image obtained from the medical image capturing device, and a name of the creator of said interpretation information;

a reference terminal configured to obtain the medical image from the medical image storage according to an instruction from an operator, and configured to enter an evaluation of the interpretation information, the evaluation providing feedback indicating satisfaction or not with the interpretation information to the creator; and

a central processing unit implementing an evaluation management unit and configured to

obtain the evaluation from the reference terminal,

refer to the name of the creator added to the supplementary information to specify a destination for the evaluation,

add the evaluation entered by the reference terminal to the supplementary information of the medical image stored in the medical image storage, and

transmit a report including said evaluation to the destination for creator review of the evaluation.

2. An interpretation support system according to claim 1, wherein:

the medical image observation terminal, in response to an input of a destination for the evaluation that corresponds to the creator name, configured to add said destination for the evaluation to the supplemental information of the stored medical image.

3. An interpretation support system according to claim 1, wherein:

the central processing unit implementing the evaluation management unit is further configured to refer to a preliminarily recorded table showing creator names and destinations of the evaluation corresponding to the creator names, and to extract the destination of the evaluation based on the creator name added to the supplementary information of the medical image.

4. An interpretation support system according to claim 1, wherein

the reference terminal is configured to display a warning if a preliminarily recorded specific period has passed within time since displaying the evaluation input screen in the reference terminal until time of receiving an input of the evaluation.

5. An interpretation support system according to claim 1, wherein

the central processing unit implementing the evaluation management unit is further configured to transmit to the destination for the evaluation result information indicating that period has passed without receiving any input of the evaluation, if a preliminarily recorded specific period has passed within time since displaying the evaluation input screen in the reference terminal until time of receiving an input of the evaluation.

6. An interpretation support system according to claim 1, wherein

the destination of the evaluation is encrypted.

7. An interpretation support system according to claim 1, wherein

the central processing unit implementing the evaluation management unit is further configured to add to the supplementary information the evaluation and information for specifying a person who performed said evaluation.

8. The interpretation support system according to claim 1, wherein the medical image capturing device is one of an X-ray apparatus, a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus, and positron emission tomography (PET) apparatus.