CORBA-based architecture for image workflow in a large consortiumof hospitals

摘要

Technology advances in digital imaging modalities and high speednetwork have enabled physicians to store digital medical images andintegrate them with a patient's text information for fast access bycomputer. The Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) is anarchival system for digital medical images. It can deliver images to aphysician through user friendly interfaces for interpretation, diagnosisand study. While these technology advances support a large-scalefilmless environment in radiology departments, they do not adequatelysupport workflow management. Thus they have very limited use forstreamline, automated, and monitoring processes. The paper presents thecharacteristics and system requirements of an Image Workflow ManagementSystem (IWFMS) in a large-scale consortium of hospitals. The paperoutlines a run-time object oriented architecture for the implementationof IWFMS. This system is general purpose, open and consists of threelayers: coordination, service and tasks. The components in each layerhave been designed and implemented as a set of CORBA services thatprovides seamless integration of flexible high level CORBA distributedobject computing middleware with low level image data management