THE CONCEPT OF ARCHIVING UNEDITED AND EDITED DIGITAL CORONARY ANGIOGRAMS

Digital image data acquired during cardiac catheterization will soon b e archived on standardized digital storage media. However, with the en ormous amount of generated data, considerable time will be wasted at l ater reviewing or at conferences, or when performing additional quanti tative studies. As a result major advantages of a digital acquisition and archiving technique will be lost. The concept of two way archiving includes an unedited (primary) digital archive as well as a (secondar y) archive edited by operator guided ''intelligent'' data reduction (I DR). IDR is based upon the elimination of useless and redundant frame sequences (FS), documentation of coronary interventions on one represe ntative single frame (F) and on the reduction of relevant FS and physi ological data to an EGG-controlled representative cardiac cycle (CC). With a heart rate of 72/min and an acquisition rate of 12.5 F/s a docu mentation of each FS map be obtained with only 10 F. A redundancy-free set of 130 F of a diagnostic study as well as only 41-85 F of an inte rventional study will be archived on an individual 3.5 '' MOD or on a CD-R. Two cardiologists and two cardiosurgeons studied independently 2 4 IDR-edited and the corresponding unedited digital angiograms and fou nd no significant differences in the diagnostically relevant coronary morphology and left ventricular function. IDR provides an edited digit al coronary angiogram, e. g. a set of images free of redundance and wi thout loss of relevant information. Uneditable FS can be archived in t heir unedited (primary) form. IDR is managed on-line by an operator in teracting with the angiographer.