PACS :Pictures Archive and Compression System
Patrice BRET
_______
The Toronto Hospital
200, Elisabeth Street
TORONTO – ONTARIO
CANADA
E-mail : Pbret@torhosp.toronto.on.ca

This paper describes our experience in developing a PACS conforming to the DICOM standard and how it has evolved over the past three years during which films

have been eliminated in ultrasound CT, MRI, and angiography and some conventional imaging.

The PACS itself employs a distributed design with specialized “servers” dedicated to the acquisition of images from the scanners; archival; retrieval; database management, and provision of several WWW-based utilities. Detailed descriptions can be found in [1]. Every server runs the LINUX operating system.

Image visualization is performed using approximately 250 NT-based workstations available in Radiology and in the clinical areas. High-end software is available for image review, and comparison. In addition, a limited number of commercial workstations are available throughout the network for 3D reconstruction and dedicated software for image analysis. In addition, images are available using the WWW from any computer within the firewall that has Internet software.

At the time of this abstract, 8 CT scans, 4 MRIs, 35 ultrasound scanners, 4 angio/intervention units, 2 CR systems and one DR system are connected to the PACS. The 250 high-end workstations are on a 100Mbits/sec switched Ethernet, while thousand of desktop computers have access to images using the WWW on an existing shared 10 Mbits/sec network. Archival is done on multiple RAID servers, for studies that are less than 3 months old. In addition a DLT juke box archives studies indefinitely. Image archival and retrieval is entirely automated and queries can be made either using the workstations or the WWW.

A connection has been established with the HIS and in addition a home-based web-based RIS has been developed.

1 R.D. Cox, C.J. Henri, R.K. Rubin and P.M. Bret, DICOM-compliant PACS with CD-based image archival, In: Proceedings of SPIE Medical Imaging 1998 – PACS Design and Evaluation: Engineering and Clinical Issues, S.C. Horii and G.J. Blaine, Editors, vol 339, pp 135-142.