|
In this work, a concept for coupling a system for content-based image retrieval in medical applications (IRMA) with
hospital information systems is presented. We aim at improving the work flow of radiologists and evaluating the
recognition performance of the IRMA system in clinical routine. The integration is designed such that a failure of IRMA
does not affect the routine operation of the other systems. The coupling is realized by generic communication modules
with the radiology information system, and the picture archiving and communication system (PACS) over the standard
protocols Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) and Health Layer 7 (HL7). An optional plug-in
for the radiological viewing station further enhances the usability. Based on this concept, the pre-fetching of relevant
images for recurrent examinations is improved. When an examination is scheduled, all previous images of the patient are
read by the IRMA system with DICOM query/retrieve. If the images were not present before in our database, features
are extracted, stored, and indexed. After the acquisition of new images from the imaging modality, the new images are
automatically retrieved by the IRMA system with DICOM query/retrieve and similar images are selected based on the
stored global signatures. These images are then loaded into the online storage of the PACS and are available for
diagnostic purposes together with those images already pre-selected by the PACS. Thus the radiologist can avoid further
delays resulting from manually fetching further images from archives which have not been automatically selected by
alphanumerical meta data. In addition, he is able to sort all fetched images by the computed IRMA-similarity.
Furthermore, the hanging of images in the viewing software is planned to be organized by IRMA suggestions
automatically, further shortening the time for the examination and reducing manual interactions. Based on the generality
of our integration concept, a CBIR-based second opinion to support the diagnostics, and computer-based training of
radiologists will be established in near future.
|
