WO2005050519A1

WO2005050519A1 - Large scale tomography image storage and transmission and system.

Info

Publication number: WO2005050519A1
Application number: PCT/KR2003/002534
Authority: WO
Inventors: Yeong-Gil Shin; Seung-Chul Park; Cheol-Hi Lee; Seung-Wook Choi; Dong-Kyun Jeong
Original assignee: Infinitt Co., Ltd.
Priority date: 2003-11-22
Filing date: 2003-11-22
Publication date: 2005-06-02
Also published as: AU2003284746A1

Abstract

The present invention relates to a digital medical image storage and transmission and system, more specifically to a method and system for acquiring a large scale tomography image from a medical image devices, and for storing and transmitting acquired image. The present invention include a step acquiring the large scale tomography image data; a step dividing the large scale tomography image data into a representative image and others, and compressing others except a representative image, and changing others a except representative image into supplementary information form; a step archiving the large scale tomography image data; a step referring the large scale tomography image data for reading and medical testing.

Description

LARGE SCALE TOMOGRAPHY IMAGE STORAGE AND TRANSMISSION AND SYSTEM

Technical Field The present invention relates to a digital medical image storage and transmission method and system. More particularly, the invention relates to a method and system for acquiring large scale tomography images from a medical image device and efficiently storing and transmitting the acquired images by a PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) .

Background Art Present medical institutions should construct a future- oriented digital environment capable of satisfying clients to reinforce medical examination and treatment, administrative service, education and research activities in order to survive competition and achieve continuous development. This digital hospital has four structures of business, data, technology and control. Systems technically required for medical institutions include a medical information system, PACS, RIS, LIS and teleradiology system. The PACS means a digital image management and transmission system that acquires digital medical images, particularly, radiographs, transmits the acquired images through a network with a high transmission rate, stores the medical images in the form of digital information instead of conventional X-ray films, and allows radiologists and clinicians to give medical treatment to patients using images displayed through an image referring device instead of a conventional film view box. The PACS includes an image acquisition system, a database and storage devices, display devices, and a network connecting them. Furthermore, the PACS uses DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) standard as its protocol. DICOM is a standard protocol that transmits medical images and information among medical imaging devices. An image based on DOCOM is composed of a header part including character information and an image data part including image data. The header part stores a patient's history, an examination institution, examination contents and character information for communication with an information system, and is followed by the image data part. All information objects are composed of data elements and the data elements code values of attributes such as a patient's name, the number of bits per pixel and so on at the most fundamental level. Images based on DICOM have the structure of study > series> instance. In general, one-time examination is one study, series are created based on examined portions or photographing positions, and lots of tomography images exist in the series. In the construction of digital hospital, the PACS cannot exist without present medical image devices including CR (Computed Radiography) , DR (Direct Radiography) , CT (Computer Tomography) and MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) . With the development of digital medial systems, new requirements are created. Recently, large-sized hospitals have introduced MDCT (Multi Detect CT) having more than 16 channels, which generates hundreds to thousands slice images each have a thickness of 0.5 to 3mm in one-time examination and requires supplementation of existing PACS structure. Large scale slice images generate lots of network traffics and need a large storage space. At present, all the slice images are not stored in the PACS but only a slice image with a thickness of 10mm is stored in the PACS, and three- dimensional images are constructed if required. Thus, all of the large scale slice images cannot be utilized for medical examination and treatment . The conventional PACS is described in detail with reference to FIG. 1. FIG. 1 is a flow chart showing a conventional PACS- based medical image storage and transmission process. Referring to FIG. 1, digital medical images are acquired using an image acquisition system from medical image systems and the acquired images are stored in an image acquisition server (S110). Here, assume that the image acquisition system generates 1000 slice images each have a thickness of 1mm and 200 images among them are key images. The 200 key images among the acquired images are stored in a storage server via a storage device of the PACS through a gateway (S120) , and all of the images acquired by the image acquisition system are stored in a separate storage device (an internal disk or a backup device connected to a medical system) for the purpose of reconstructing three-dimensional images later (S130) . A clinician can retrieve the 200 slice images and reconstructed three-dimensional images from the storage server of the PACS to display them using a clinician client (Here, the client means a terminal that connects to a server to use programs) (S140) . A radiologist can retrieve the 200 images from the storage server of the PACS using a radiologist client to display them and, if required, he/she can fetch all of the images, separately stored, to reconstruct the images into three- dimensional images and display them (S150) . After the reconstruction of three-dimensional images, the three- dimensional images are stored in the storage server of the PACS. However, it is inconvenient to reconstruct the three- dimensional images when required because only part of the slice images are stored in the PACS and shared by all medical personnel in a hospital but the whole slice images are stored in the separate storage device such that only specified persons of radiology can access them. Furthermore, the separate storage space for storing the whole slice images is restricted so that only data corresponding to two or three days to one week is stored in the storage space and the stored slice images are erased after the period. Thus, three-dimensional images cannot be reconstructed. To solve this problem, a separate MiniPACS is constructed such that the slice images are stored therein. In this case, however, redundant investment of resource is required and there are limitations in sharing whole slice images by all medical personnel of the hospital. With the development of medical equipment and software, reading using three-dimensional images is popularized and necessity of referring to the three- dimensional images is increased. Accordingly, a system by which all the medical personnel can easily share all data is needed.

Disclosure of Invention Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a medical image storage and transmission method and system for allowing users to share whole digital images acquired from medical image devices and conveniently refer to the original images. Another object of the present invention is to provide a medical image storage and transmission method and system, which prevents redundant investment for storing digital image data acquired from the medical image devices and waste of workflow to improve efficiency of storing and transmitting images. To accomplish the above objects, according to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a large scale tomography image storage and transmission method for acquiring medical images from a medical image device, storing the acquired images in a storage server and referring to the images stored in the storage server for clinical diagnosis. The method comprises the steps of: acquiring large scale tomography image data from the medical image device; dividing the acquired tomography image data into a representative image and others, compressing the images other than the representative image and transforming the images other than the representative image into a supplementary information form; archiving the compressed tomography image data in the storage server of a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) ; and referring to the archived image data for reading and clinical diagnosis. Preferably, in the compressing and transforming step, the representative image is included in series of DICOM standard, and at least one representative image includes at least one image other than the representative image. The compressing and transforming step comprises a step of storing the supplementary information in the header part of DICOM data. When the supplementary information is stored in the image data part of DICOM data, position information thereof is stored in the header part of the DICOM data. The image referring step comprises the steps of: inputting representative image data including the supplementary information; referring to the representative image displayed by inputting the representative image data; confirming whether the supplementary information is referred after the representative image is referred; decompressing the compressed supplementary information when the supplementary information is referred; and referring to the decompressed original images. According to another aspect of the present invention, there is also provided a large scale tomography image storage and transmission system for acquiring medical images from a medical image device, storing the acquired images in a storage server and referring to the images stored in the storage server for clinical diagnosis. The system comprises: an image acquisition unit acquiring large scale tomography image data from the medical image device; an image compression and transformation unit dividing the acquired tomography image data into a representative image and others, compressing the images other than the representative image and transforming the images other than the representative image into a supplementary information form; an image archiving unit archiving the compressed tomography image data in the storage server of PACS; and an image referring unit referring to the image data archived in the storage server of PACS for reading and clinical diagnosis. According to another aspect of the present invention, there is also provided a large scale tomography image storage and transmission method for acquiring medical images from a medical image device, storing the acquired images in a storage server and referring to the images stored in the storage server for clinical diagnosis. The method comprises the steps of: acquiring large scale tomography image data from the medical image device; transforming the acquired tomography image data into a single three-dimensional volume data file by an image transformer; archiving the three-dimensional volume data file in the storage server of PACS; and referring to the three-dimensional volume data file archived in the storage server of PACS for reading and clinical diagnosis. According to another aspect of the present invention, there is also provided a large scale tomography image storage and transmission system for acquiring medical images from a medical image device, storing the acquired images in a storage server and referring to the images stored in the storage server for clinical diagnosis. The system comprises: an image acquisition unit acquiring large scale tomography image data from the medical image device; a three-dimensional image volume data generation unit generating a single three-dimensional volume data file from the acquired large scale tomography image data by an image transformer; an image archiving unit archiving the generated three-dimensional volume data file in the storage server of PACS; and an image referring unit immediately referring to the three-dimensional volume data file archived in the storage server of PACS without having an additional operation for reading and clinical diagnosis.

Brief Description of the Drawings Further objects and advantages of the invention can be more fully understood from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which: FIG. 1 is a flow chart showing a conventional PACS-based medical image storing and transmitting process; FIG. 2 is a flow chart showing a method for storing and transmitting large-scale tomography images according to an embodiment of the present invention; FIG. 3 illustrates compression and transformation of the representative image and others shown in FIG. 2; FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing the step of referring to the medical images stored in the storage server of PACS, shown in FIG.2, in detail; FIG. 5 is a flow chart showing a method for storing and transmitting large-scale tomography images according to another embodiment of the present invention; FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a system for storing and transmitting large-scale tomography images according to an embodiment of the present invention; and FIG. 7 is a block diagram of a system for storing and transmitting large-scale tomography images according to another embodiment of the present invention.

Best Mode for Carrying Out the Invention The present invention will now be described in detail in connection with preferred embodiments with reference to the accompanying drawings . FIG. 2 is a flow chart showing a method for storing and transmitting large-scale tomography images according to an embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIG. 2, large- scale tomography images are acquired from a medical image device in the step S210. The acquired large-scale tomography images are divided into a representative image and other images in the step S220. Here, the representative image is included in at least one of study, series and instance groups of DICOM standard. The images other than the representative image are compressed and transformed into a form of supplementary information of the representative image in the step S230. The compressed and transformed image data is stored in a storage server by a storage device of PACS in the step S240. Any medical personnel of a hospital including clinicians or radiologists can refer to the representative image from the image data stored in the storage server of PACS and, if required, separately refer to the compressed images in the step S250. FIG. 3 illustrates an example of compression and transformation of the representative image and other images shown in FIG. 2. Referring to FIG. 3, when N slice images are acquired from the medical image device, image 1 (310) is not compressed by an image compression and transformation device but becomes representative image 1 (350). Images 320, 330 and 340 other than the image 1 (310) are compressed by the image compression and transformation device into supplementary information 360 and added to the representative image 1 (350) . Here, image compression is roughly described. In general, image compression is classified into loss compression and lossless compression according to whether video information is lost or not after decompression of image. The loss compression method includes JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) and MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) based on DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) that is a typical encoding technique. The lossless compression can be achieved using entropy coding such as Huffman coding, Lempel-Ziv coding and arithmetic coding. Preferably, the compression of medical images according to an embodiment of the present invention uses the lossless compression for the purpose of decompressing the original images. Any one of the aforementioned techniques can be used for the compression of medical images. FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing the step of referring to the medical images stored in the storage server of PACS, shown in FIG.2, in detail. Referring to FIG. 4, a user inputs representative image data including supplementary information through a user's client in the step S410. The user refers to the representative image displayed by inputting the representative image data to judge whether the body of the patient corresponding to the image has a trouble in the step S420. Then, the user checks whether he/she refers to the supplementary information having image information other than the representative image in the step S430. When the user wants to refer to the images other than the representative image, the user decompresses the supplementary information included in the representative image in the step S440 and refers to the original images other than the representative image in the step S450. FIG. 5 is a flow chart showing a method for storing and transmitting large-scale tomography images according to another embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIG. 5, large- scale tomography images are acquired from the medical image device in the step S510, and the acquired images are transformed into a single three-dimensional volume data file in the step S520. The three-dimensional volume data file is stored in the storage server by the storage device of PACS in the step S530. Users can refer to three-dimensional medial images from the three-dimensional volume data file stored in the storage server of PACS in the step S540. Furthermore, when the users require to refer to two-dimensional images in the step S550, the section of a three-dimensional volume image is reconstructed into a two- dimensional image such that the users can separately refer to the image in the step S560. The aforementioned three-dimensional volume data generating method is a conventional three-dimensional image construction method. Various three-dimensional imaging techniques include MPR (Multiplanar reconstruction) and volume rendering. It is preferable to generate the three-dimensional volume data file according to the present invention using the three-dimensional imaging techniques. FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a system for storing and transmitting large-scale tomography images according to an embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIG. 6, the large-scale tomography image storing and transmitting system includes an image acquisition unit 610, an image compression and transformation unit 620, an image archiving unit 630, and an image referring unit 640. The image acquisition unit 610 acquires large-scale tomography images from a medical image device using an image acquisition device and stores the acquired images in an image acquisition server. The image compression and transformation unit 620 compresses images other than a representative image, which are derived from the image acquisition server, by an encoder and transforms the compressed images into supplementary information of the representative image by a transformer. The image archiving unit 630 stores the large-scale tomography image data compressed by the image compression and transformation unit 620 in a storage server through a storage device of the medical image storing and transmitting system. The image referring unit 640 is used to refer to the large-scale tomography image data stored in the storage server for clinical diagnosis. Furthermore, in the large-scale tomography image storing and transmitting system, the image referring unit 640 includes a representative image referring part used to refer to the representative image and a supplementary information referring part used to refer to images other than the representative image. The supplementary information referring part includes a decoder that decodes the supplementary information compressed by the image compression and transformation unit 620. FIG. 7 is a block diagram of a system for storing and transmitting large-scale tomography images according to another embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIG. 7, the tomography image storing and transmitting system includes an image acquisition unit 710 for acquiring large-scale tomography images from a medical image device using an image acquisition device and storing the acquired images in an image acquisition server, a three-dimensional image volume data generating unit 720 for generating a single three-dimensional volume data file from the tomography images acquired by the image acquisition unit 710 by an image transformer, an image archiving unit 730 for storing the three-dimensional volume data file generated by the three-dimensional image volume data generating unit 720 in a storage server by the storage device of the medical image storing and transmitting system, and an image referring unit 740 for referring to the three-dimensional volume data file stored in the storage server of the system for clinical diagnosis.

Industrial Applicability According to the present invention, users can share whole information of digital images acquired from a medical image device and it is convenient to refer to original images (slice images obtained by a high performance tomography system) . Furthermore, the present invention prevents effectively uses digital video data obtained from medical image devices and prevents waste of workflow. Moreover, it is possible to refer to three-dimensional medical images immediately without having an additional three-dimensional reconstruction operation. Thus, a three-dimensional image can be displayed first and a two- dimensional slice image can be referred if required. This improves large-scale tomography reading efficiency. While the present invention has been described with reference to the particular illustrative embodiments, it is not to be restricted by the embodiments but only by the appended claims. It is to be appreciated that those skilled in the art can change or modify the embodiments without departing from the scope and spirit of the present invention.

Claims

What Is Claimed Is:

1. A large scale tomography image storage and transmission method for acquiring medical images from a medical image device, storing the acquired images in a storage server and referring to the images stored in the storage server for clinical diagnosis, comprising the steps of: acquiring large scale tomography image data from the medical image device; dividing the acquired tomography image data into a representative image and others, compressing the images other than the representative image and transforming the images other than the representative image into a supplementary information form; archiving the compressed tomography image data in the storage server of a picture archiving and communication system (PACS); and referring to the archived image data for reading and clinical diagnosis.

2. The large scale tomography image storage and transmission method as claimed in claim 1, wherein, in the compressing and transforming step, the representative image is included in at least one of study, series and instance groups of DICOM image standard, and at least one representative image includes at least one image other than the representative image.

3. The large scale tomography image storage and transmission method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the compressing and transforming step comprises a step of storing the supplementary information in the header part of DICOM data.

4. The large scale tomography image storage and transmission method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the compressing and transforming step comprises a step of storing the supplementary information in the image data part of DICOM data.

5. The large scale tomography image storage and transmission method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the image referring step comprises the steps of: inputting representative image data including the supplementary information; referring to the representative image displayed by inputting the representative image data; confirming whether the supplementary information is referred after the representative image is referred; decompressing the compressed supplementary information when the supplementary information is referred; and referring to the decompressed original images.

6. A large scale tomography image storage and transmission method for acquiring medical images from a medical image device, storing the acquired images in a storage server and referring to the images stored in the storage server for clinical diagnosis, comprising the steps of: acquiring large scale tomography image data from the medical image device; transforming the acquired tomography image data into a single three-dimensional volume data file by an image transformer; archiving the three-dimensional volume data file in the storage server of PACS; and referring to the three-dimensional volume data file archived in the storage server of PACS for reading and clinical diagnosis .

7. The large scale tomography image storage and transmission method as claimed in claim 6, wherein the referring step comprises a step of referring to a three-dimensional image from the three-dimensional volume data file, and a step of reconstructing a two-dimensional image from the three- dimensional volume data file and referring to the two- dimensional image.

8. A large scale tomography image storage and transmission system for acquiring medical images from a medical image device, storing the acquired images in a storage server and referring to the images stored in the storage server for clinical diagnosis, comprising: an image acquisition unit acquiring large scale tomography image data from the medical image device; an image compression and transformation unit dividing the acquired tomography image data into a representative image and others, compressing the images other than the representative image and transforming the images other than the representative image into a supplementary information form; an image archiving unit archiving the compressed tomography image data in the storage server of PACS; and an image referring unit referring to the image data archived in the storage server of PACS for reading and clinical diagnosis .

9. The large scale tomography image storage and transmission system as claimed in claim 8, wherein the image referring unit includes a representative image referring part referring to the representative image, and a supplementary information referring part referring to the images other than the representative image.

10. The large scale tomography image storage and transmission system as claimed in claim 9, wherein the supplementary information referring part includes a decoder for decoding (decompressing) the supplementary information compressed by the image compression and transformation unit.

11. A large scale tomography image storage and transmission system for acquiring medical images from a medical image device, storing the acquired images in a storage server and referring to the images stored in the storage server for clinical diagnosis, comprising: an image acquisition unit acquiring large scale tomography image data from the medical image device; a three-dimensional image volume data generation unit generating a single three-dimensional volume data file from the acquired large scale tomography image data by an image transformer; an image archiving unit archiving the generated three- dimensional volume data file in the storage server of PACS; and an image referring unit immediately referring to the three- dimensional volume data file archived in the storage server of PACS without having an additional operation for reading and clinical diagnosis.