OBJECT MANIFESTATIONS FOR MEDICAL IMAGING APPLICATIONS

As healthcare providers become increasingly decentralized and distribu ted, information systems support must follow suit by providing healthc are professionals with flexible, adaptable and secure views of medical data in a timely fashion. To this end, this paper introduces the noti on of manifestations of medical image objects in a heterogeneous clien t environment. We define the fundamental building blocks of manifestat ions using object-oriented concepts. Examples are given of how constra ints and rules can be used to govern the presentation of data within o bjects and for the environmental (e.g. hardware and network) and user defined factors (e.g. preferences) that act as inputs to manifestation s. Using these techniques, we give several examples of user interactio ns with a system based on manifestations. This paper demonstrates how objects can be efficiently and effectively presented to users with var ious information appliances using manifestation techniques. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.