Object-oriented remote consultation and diagnosis in global PACS using multi-thread Java

Abstract

Designing an integrated portable, object-oriented, real-time multimedia remote consultation and diagnosis (RCD) system for Global PACS has been a research challenge for the past years. There are many specialties in the medical environment, generating multimedia information. During a diagnosis, physicians need to refer to other cases, medical references and other physicians. Continuing medical education and exchanging experience among physicians are critical items to improve the quality of diagnosis. In clinical telemedicine, there is a need to have a viewing workstation serving different purposes in an heterogeneous medical environment. This viewing workstation must be portable and flexible to meet the needs of various medical specialties. The objective of this research is to perform an object oriented analysis and design for a Global PACS environment and implement in Java. In this research, the Java programming environment is used. Object-oriented Java is portable across several platforms. It has a Graphics User Interface (GUI) package, a network package, a Web package, a security package and a thread package. In this research, common objects are defined and implemented for the RCD system. The GUI part can be customized to fit different purposes. This development is performed in the context of a Global PACS environment. The Global PACS RCD has three major program components: the diagnosis component, the education component and management component. These components all share the same common objects and methods. The software modules are designed to run as stand-alone Java applications and as applets in the Java-enabled Web browsers. Physicians can use it to do diagnosis of store and forward cases on-line or off-line in a Global PACS. Students can check out cases and turn in their diagnosis from the Web browser. A system manager can manage the RCD workstations and Global PACS database from the same workstation. Performance tests of the object oriented Java software show a performance equal or better to previous RCD implementation in Global PACS.