Title: Medical image management system

Authors: Margaret Varga, Paul Ducksbury, Peter Somol

Addresses: QinetiQ, St. Andrew's Road, Malvern, WR14 3PS, UK. ' QinetiQ, St. Andrew's Road, Malvern, WR14 3PS, UK. ' QinetiQ, St. Andrew's Road, Malvern, WR14 3PS, UK

Abstract: The success of any healthcare service is dependent on the efficient use and sharing of patient information. A Medical Image Database Management System has been designed to store medical images, textural metafiles containing descriptions of clinical features and their diagnostic results, etc. The PC-based system allows users to share and modify data, to retrieve data for further examination, to browse through the database and make clinical decisions based on the medical images found. It also provides the framework within which an annotation tool can be used to annotate areas of clinical concerns graphically and textually. The annotated images can be used for educational purposes or for seeking second opinion confirmation via the telemedicine system, which is integrated within the database system. This paper discusses the use of the system in dermatology to support primary care service.

Keywords: telemedicine; teledermatology; image compression; virtual primary healthcare; diagnosis; medical image management; healthcare technology; patient information; information sharing; diagnostic results; database management system; image DBMS; e-healthcare; electronic healthcare.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHTM.2006.008427

International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management, 2006 Vol.7 No.5, pp.387 - 402

Published online: 20 Dec 2005 *

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