by Kamauu, Aaron W. C.; DuVall, Scott L.; Wiggins, Richard H.; Avrin, David E.

In the creation of interesting radiological cases in a digital teaching file, it is necessary to adjust the window and level settings of an image to effectively display the educational focus. The web-based applet described in this paper presents an effective solution for real-time window and level adjustments without leaving the picture archiving and communications system workstation. Optimized images are created, as user-defined parameters are passed between the applet and a servlet on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant teaching file server.

DOI: 10.1007/s10278-007-9038-3
Online Date: 5/30/2007
Print publication date: 9/1/2008
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by Chen, Richard; Mongkolwat, Pattanasak; Channin, David S.

This paper describes the web-based visualization interface of RadMonitor, a platform-independent web application designed to help manage the complexity of information flow within a health care enterprise. The system eavesdrops on Health Layer 7 traffic and parses statistical operational information into a database. The information is then presented to the user as a treemap—a graphical visualization scheme that simplifies the display of hierarchical information. While RadMonitor has been implemented for the purpose of analyzing radiology operations, its XML backend allows it to be reused for virtually any other hierarchical data set.

DOI: 10.1007/s10278-007-9033-8
Online Date: 5/30/2007
Print publication date: 9/1/2008
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by Ooijen, P. M. A.; Broekema, A.; Oudkerk, M.

Current developments in storage solutions, PACS, and client-server systems allow for 3D imaging at the desktop. This can be achieved together with full storage into PACS of all slices, including the very large thin-section CT datasets. This paper describes a possible setup, which has been in operation for several years now, in response to an article by Meenan et al. previously published in this journal (1).

DOI: 10.1007/s10278-007-9041-8
Online Date: 5/30/2007
Print publication date: 6/1/2008
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by Deserno, Thomas M.; Güld, Mark O.; Plodowski, Bartosz; Spitzer, Klaus; Wein, Berthold B.; Schubert, Henning; Ney, Hermann; Seidl, Thomas

The impact of image pattern recognition on accessing large databases of medical images has recently been explored, and content-based image retrieval (CBIR) in medical applications (IRMA) is researched. At the present, however, the impact of image retrieval on diagnosis is limited, and practical applications are scarce. One reason is the lack of suitable mechanisms for query refinement, in particular, the ability to (1) restore previous session states, (2) combine individual queries by Boolean operators, and (3) provide continuous-valued query refinement. This paper presents a powerful user interface for CBIR that provides all three mechanisms for extended query refinement. The various mechanisms of man–machine interaction during a retrieval session are grouped into four classes: (1) output modules, (2) parameter modules, (3) transaction modules, and (4) process modules, all of which are controlled by a detailed query logging. The query logging is linked to a relational database. Nested loops for interaction provide a maximum of flexibility within a minimum of complexity, as the entire data flow is still controlled within a single Web page. Our approach is implemented to support various modalities, orientations, and body regions using global features that model gray scale, texture, structure, and global shape characteristics. The resulting extended query refinement has a significant impact for medical CBIR applications.

DOI: 10.1007/s10278-007-9037-4
Online Date: 5/12/2007
Print publication date: 9/1/2008
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