KEYWORDS: Databases, Picture Archiving and Communication System, Data storage, Image storage, Heart, Data communications, Image retrieval, Internet, Data storage servers, Medical imaging
The goal of this paper is to describe the experience of the Heart Institute (InCor) on the implementation of a fault-tolerant
Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) over a data grid architecture. The system is centered on a DICOM
image server with a distributed storage and failover capability. The proposed data grid architecture is deployed over a
gigabit Ethernet network which integrates the two main public Hospitals in Sao Paulo and one University Hospital in Rio
de Janeiro, both in Brazil. Distributed data storage in the three sites is managed by the Storage Resource Broker (SRB)
developed at the University of California at San Diego. The architecture of the implemented PACS image server can be
divided into two major functional modules: a) DICOM protocol handler; b) Distributed storage of image data. Fault-tolerance
is achieved by injecting redundancy into the modules, which are provided with failover capability. The DICOM
protocol handler comprises a series of server processes hosted by different machines and a load-balancer node which
distributes the computational load among the servers. The load balancer is provided with a backup node which is triggered
in case of failure, thus assuring the continuous operation of the system. Distributed storage of image data is implemented as
a thin software layer over the SRB. Image data are replicated at the three sites, so the PACS server is able to retrieve image
data even when only a single site is available. A prototype of the DICOM image server has been deployed in this
environment and is currently under evaluation.
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