THE ACONET (AUSTRIAN ACADEMIC COMPUTER NE TWORK) IS DATA CARRIER FOR TELERADIOLOGICAL CONSULTATIONS

Purpose: To assess the feasibility of image transfer for teleradiologi c consultations using the Austrian Academic Computer Network (ACOnet). The ACOnet corresponds between the main universities to a MAN (Metrop olitan Area Network) with a transfer rate of 4 Mbps. Its use is free o f charge for university institutions. Materials and methods: 1740 test image data sets and 620 image data sets for teleradiological consulta tions were exchanged without annotations between the Departments of Di agnostic Radiology of the universities of Innsbruck and Graz, using th e ACOnet. Results: Data transmission was reliable and fast with an ave rage transfer capacity of 170.2 kBytes/s (94-341 kBytes/s). There were no major problems with image transfer during the test phase. Conclusi on: Due to its high transfer capacity, the ACOnet is considered a reas onable alternative to the ISDN service.