Title: Streaming of medical images using JPEG2000 Interactive Protocol

Authors: Jean-François Pambrun; Rita Noumeir

Addresses: Department of Electrical Engineering, École de Technologie Supérieure, University of Quebec, 1100 Notre-Dame West, Montreal, Quebec, H3C 1K3, Canada. ' Department of Electrical Engineering, École de Technologie Supérieure, University of Quebec, 1100 Notre-Dame West, Montreal, Quebec, H3C 1K3, Canada

Abstract: Access to all relevant information at the diagnostic decision moment improves the quality of care. With the deployment of the electronic health records (EHRs), information now exits in multiple distributed systems. When conducting diagnosis based on medical images, physicians often need to compare current images with older ones that may need to be imported prior to visualisation. This leads to persistency management and information consistency issues. JPEG2000 Interactive Protocol (JPIP) can be used to avoid imports by streaming images and significantly reduce bandwidth requirements. In this paper, we describe how JPIP can enable two interactive visualisation schemes, 'zoom and pan' and a magnification lens, to significantly improve user experience and productivity while minimising network usage. We will show that, with carefully selected compression parameters, JPIP allows physicians to start their investigation within few seconds of the initial request and stay productive during the entire download process.

Keywords: medical imaging; electronic health records; EHR; image communication; image streaming; JPEG2000 Interactive Protocol; JPIP; persistency management; information consistency; visualisation; e-health; electronic healthcare.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICA.2012.050058

International Journal of Innovative Computing and Applications, 2012 Vol.4 No.3/4, pp.135 - 148

Received: 21 May 2011
Accepted: 22 Dec 2011
Published online: 22 Sep 2014 *

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