A USER-CENTERED COOPERATIVE INFORMATION-SYSTEM FOR MEDICAL IMAGING DIAGNOSIS

Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is one of the most promisin g technologies aimed to assist medical users located in different clin ical sites to access distributed medical imaging information. This art icle presents a cooperative information system intended for remote med ical imaging diagnosis. The main general CSCW problems addressed here are as follows: 1) At a conceptual level: The definition of a procedur e for the design of user-centered cooperative systems; and 2) at a tec hnological level: The improvement of user feedback and the optimizatio n of the communication bandwidth in highly interactive CSCW applicatio ns for remote access to medical image databases. These technological g oals are achieved by developing two main components: A CSCW distribute d architecture for synchronous cooperative work and a DICOM medical im age database management system. A cooperative system in the field of c ardiac angiography images has allowed us to test and validate the user -centered design procedures and the CSCW architectures implemented. Fi nally, a discussion of experience of the user-centered design and of t he implementation of cooperative information systems is also presented .