MIMOSA - A FUNCTIONAL-MODEL OF THE MANAGEMENT OF MEDICAL IMAGES

The concept of picture archiving and communication system (PACS) appea red in 1982. Twelve years later most PACS prototypes still do not sati sfy the medical community requirements: too much emphasis has been put on technical solutions and little effort devoted to the management of images itself. A common approach to this problem is needed more than ever to allow cost-effective systems to be developed. Modelling is a w ay to reach this objective, and the MIMOSA topic within the AIM/EurlPA CS project aims at defining such a model of medical image management. This paper presents the MIMOSA approach with the three underlying cons traints, i.e. genericity, implementation independence and performance. The MIMOSA group is building three interrelated models: a data model, a functional model and a dynamic model. However, in this report we fo cus only on the functional model, and explain how it was abstracted fr om various clinical scenarios in the first phase of the project. The a vailability level concept is introduced as a customizable and implemen tation independent solution to the problem of managing the delay of ac cess to the information. The so-called contextual diagram and the acqu isition of a new examination which are two representative parts of the model are detailed. The validation aspects and the relationships to p rojects working on the management of patient records are addressed as a conclusion.