Teleconsulting and telediagnosis on cardiological and angiographic digital sequences

Digital communication in medical image consulting is challenged by information overflow. This is true in particular for cardioangiographic images that require 25 frame/sec and matrices of 512*512 pixels. Based on multimedia commercial platform, a system for simultaneous digitising of biological signals, audio tracks and image sequences, has been developed in the catheterization laboratory. The work plan was subdivided in: -immediate retrieving and consulting of multimedia documents, -multimedia relational archiving; -communication tools for host consultants. The following services are already operative in the routine clinical activity which have been experienced on over 50 catheterization procedures: real time acquisition of long angiographic cine sequences; local editing and quantitative evaluation; transmission of essential elementary data (clinical data, hemodynamic and angiographic findings including 10 descriptive images) for local hospital information system and LAN services; teleconsulting and desktop sharing services for exchanging information and images of interest among remote experts; videoconferencing; transmission of complete angiographic examinations in digital form; standard communication protocol for the transmission of resulting data on an Internet backbone; hi-speed telematics services (i.e., videoconferencing and transfer of image sequences) operating on broad-band networks, such as local and metropolitan area networks. Cardiologists, radiologists, computer scientists, engineers and national companies are contributing to the development of an user-friendly system continuously updated according to technical and scientific progress.