Effects of a large-scale deployment of soft-copy devices for picture archiving and communication systems viewing

A study was developed to investigate several aspects of deployment of stand-alone computers and a web-based server for displaying digital images. The costs associated with installation, upgrades, training, and maintenance of both systems were documented, as well as patterns of usage and preferences of physicians for the two types of systems. A clinical archive was created to store relevant images with a web-based front end. Users were classified according to their imaging requirements and were given access to images from either the diagnostic archive (full study sets) or the clinical archive. The range of functionality of the web-based system was significantly lower than that of the stand-alone system; however, the costs associated with the administration of the stand-alone systems were far higher than those associated with a web server. A clinical archive was created to store relevant images with a web-based front end. This study illustrates the different approaches to distribution of images to clinicians with the costs of administration of each system.