ASYNCHRONOUS TRANSFER MODE TECHNOLOGY FOR RADIOLOGIC IMAGE COMMUNICATION

Image communication is an important component in picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) and teleradiology applications, Currentl y, local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs) use differ ent technologies for image communication, Asynchronous transfer mode ( ATM) is an emerging technology that can be used for both LANs and WANs , This article describes experimental results using an ATM network to transmit CT scans and digitized radiographs between the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Mount Zion Hospital, an affiliate d community hospital in the San Francisco Bay area, The WAN connection between the two hospitals Is via an ATM main switch at Pacific Bell, a local communication carrier located in Oakland, CA, which uses singl e-mode optical fibers, Preliminary results show that, using the ATM Op tical Carrier Level 3 (OC3) (155 Mbits/sec) specification, it takes 1. 3 sec and 2.7 sec to transmit a 10-Mbyte digitized radiograph and a 20 -Mbyte CT scan, respectively, between the two locations, Encouraged by these results, we have designed and implemented an ATM WAN and LAN be tween UCSF and Mount Zion Hospital, This is the first of a three-phase project of installing a WAN serving four hospitals and one clinic in the San Francisco Bay area.