The advantages of digital imaging are clear -- patients are exposed to less radiation and obtain faster, more precise diagnoses.

Digital technology enables medical experts to process and combine images recorded using a variety of different methods, and to more quickly find what they are looking for in the data collected on the patient.

But this bulky volume of data creates problems: the sheer size of the data files -- on average, several dozen megabytes per record -- overloads data links between specialist colleagues.

The new Patient CD System developed by the Institute for Telematik in Trier, Germany, provides a solution.

"Our collaboration with numerous hospitals in Trier inspired us to develop an exceptionally user-friendly and fully automated system for archiving medical images of all kinds on CDs," recalls Professor Christoph Meinel, head of the Institute, which is served by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. "Now, burning CDs and viewing digital images on screen no longer requires special knowledge or experience."

The system's writing module enables medical pictures from recording equipment or workstations to be compiled, viewed and archived using a CD burner. DICOM is the standard international data format approved by the medical profession.

The second module is a viewer providing all the tools required for reproducing and processing a high resolution image or image sequence. To allow other physicians or therapists to examine the images on their computers without downloading software, the viewer is also burned on the CD.

The same is true for patients. They can take home up to 1,000 images of their body on a CD, to print out or show relatives and friends a picture of their unborn baby or of a broken bone.

(Reference: Research News 7-2001 of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.)


[Contact: Prof. Christoph Meinel]

31-Jul-2001