A study of the application sharing capabilities in telemedicine

The main aim of this study was to find out if the image format (TIFF or JPE G) influenced the time delay for transferring radiological images by the ap plication sharing tool of a desktop videoconferencing system. The second ta sk of the study was to define a procedure that optimized the time delay to load and remotely visualize the images. The results were achieved by applyi ng a test procedure called 'benchmark protocol'. The videoconferencing syst em used for the test was Intel ProShare 200(TM) v2.0. The image transfer wa s performed by a BRI ISDN connection. We showed that the image format had n o significant influence on the time delay. We presented an optimal procedur e for image transfer. Furthermore, store and forward procedures with simple file transfer were shown to be inferior to the use of application sharing. For radiological image transfer we recommend to use lossless file formats and application sharing with the image already loaded in because this metho d achieves the lowest time delays. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. A ll rights reserved.