Architectural considerations for integrating HIS/RIS/PACS in a distributed and heterogeneous environment

摘要

Advances in image processing techniques, databases, workstations, network technologies and communication systems have created great interest in the integration of heterogeneous collections of multimedia data. The success of a medical multimedia information system depends on integration of distributed heterogeneous PACS, RIS and HIS, to provide rapid access to patients' text and image information throughout a hospital. The work presented here adapts a distributed database (DDB) approach to integrating HIS, RIS and PACS in a distributed heterogeneous environment. It is based on previous work on integrating structured (relational) database systems using the `Multidatabase' approach. Integrating distributed heterogeneous HIS/RIS/PACS causes special problems. Two alternative architectural proposals for providing system support to integrate heterogeneous HIS/RIS and PACS in a distributed environment are presented and discussed. One of these architectures provides system support by using a distributed index approach, where the images indexes are held at the local sites. The second proposed architecture uses a global image index. In this approach the global image index provides the list of available images within the network. Advantages and disadvantages of each approach are also discussed.