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A flexible image archiving system using a personal computer and optical disk

Department of Medical Physics, St James' University Hospital, Leeds ^* Paracom Associates Limited, UK

This excerpt was created in the absence of an abstract.

Diagnostic imaging departments generate large amounts of image data from several sources (nuclear medicine, ultrasound, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), digital radiography). There is often a requirement to preserve the raw data, which creates a need for a stable, large-capacity storage facility. Image archiving facilities are usually provided by the manufacturer of the imaging device and are based on magnetic tape or floppy disks. These are inherently slow and take up a large amount of storage space.

Here, we describe the application of a personal computer and optical disk as an image archiving device, which brings the advantages of large capacity, low cost and savings on storage space.

Images are stored in a variety of formats, which vary between manufacturers and even between different machines of the same manufacturer.

Image archiving facilities based on magnetic tape have the advantage of large capacity but the data transfer rate is low (approximately 0.1 Mbytes/s), data are written serially so access time is long and the tape reels occupy a large amount of floor space (a busy CT scanner may generate one reel of tape per day). Added to this is the high cost of tapes and the requirement periodically to rewind and rewrite the tapes to preserve image quality.

Received for publication November 1, 1988.