MEDICAL IMAGE INFORMATICS INFRASTRUCTURE DESIGN AND APPLICATIONS

Picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) is a system integra tion of multimodality images and health information systems designed f or improving the operation of a radiology department. As it evolves, P ACS becomes a hospital image document management system with a volumin ous image and related data file repository. A medical image informatic s infrastructure can be designed to take advantage of existing data, p roviding PACS with add-on value for health care service, research, and education. A medical image informatics infrastructure (MIII) consists of the following components: medical images and associated data (incl uding PACS database), image processing, data/knowledge base management , visualization, graphic user interface, communication networking, and application oriented software. This paper describes these components and their logical connection, and illustrates some applications based on the concept of the MIII.