<title>Image flow management in a PACS network</title>

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to develop a graphical tool to analyze and optimize the image flow pattern in a hierarchical, large scale PACS local area network. The PACS network is characterized as heavy image traffic, long image flow path, heterogeneous computer nodes, multiple protocols, and physical media. A smooth operation of the PACS network depends on a centralized, timely report of image flow pattern, trouble spots, and an alarm mechanism for critical conditions. Crucial timing parameters such as queue delay from acquisition to display, processing time for archiving and reformatting, and retrieval speed, can be locally collected and reported to the network manager for statistical characterization. Moreover, network traffic information and system component failures anywhere in the image flow can be reported graphically. High urgency failures trigger an immediate alarm to the designated operator. Our network management software with user friendly graphical interface is easy to use even by non-computer personnel such as hospital administrators. It achieves total automation in trouble reporting and thus leads to improvement of the network layout and operation condition based on the analysis of image flow pattern.

SPIE Medical Imaging 50th anniversary: history of the Picture Archiving and Communication Systems Conference

“…The third highest number of papers (97) were presented at Medical Imaging 1994: “PACS Design and Evaluation” chaired by RG Jost in Newport Beach, California. Teleradiology systems including for pathology images 268 – 270 and networking performance including asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) in wide-area networks were reported, 268 , 271 – 273 as was the use of personal computer technology for a radiologic review workstation. 274 Again, the importance of interfacing RIS to PACS for enhanced functionality was presented in multiple papers.…”

<title>PACS war room for global teleradiology</title>

“…Many of these applications can become highly automated. 3 The building tools for the war room design are an integration of three components: Harris Network Manager, IBM NetView 6000, and our own graphical tool running on Windows/NT.4 The network management software uses Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).5' 6 We have developed many specific agents for network management and front end displays based on both Harris Network Manager and IBM NetView 6000 as platforms. A network sniffer software from network general is used to collect the statistics for the entire network.7…”

“…Image flow throughout the chain can be visually monitored by polling the contents of various task queues. 3 We devised a graphic monitoring mechanism which shows each image file traveling from an acquisition node to an archive, and then to the destination workstations. In case of image retrieval, the same mechanism shows image flow from the archive to the requesting workstation.…”