Picture archiving and communications systems development and performance results

Picture Archiving and Communication Systems(PACS) provide an integration of digital imaging information in a hospital, which encompasses various imaging equipment, viewing workstations, database archive systems, and a high speed fiber optic network. One of the most important requirements for integration is the standardization of communication protocols to connect devices from different vendors. Since 1985, the ACR-NEMA standard provides a hardware interface, a set of software commands, and a consistent set of data formats for point-to-point interconnection of medical equipment. However, it has been shown to be inadequate for PACS networking environments, because of its point-to-point nature and its inflexibility to allow other services and protocols in the future. Based on previous experience of PACS developments in The University of Arizona, a new communication protocol for PACS networks has been suggested to the ACR-NEMA Working Group VI. The defined PACS protocol is intended to facilitate the development of PACS's capable of interfacing with other hospital information systems. Also, it is intended to allow the creation of diagnostic information data bases which can be interrogated by a variety of distributed devices. A particularly important goal is to support communications in a multivendor environment. The new protocol specifications are defined primarily as a combination of the International Organization for Standardization / Open Systems Interconnection (ISO/OSI) protocols and the data format portion of ACR-NEMA standard. This paper addresses the specification and implementation of the proposed PACS protocol into network node. The protocol specification, which covers Presentation, Session, Transport, and Network layers, is summarized briefly. The implementation has natural extentions to Global PACS environments. The protocol implementation is discussed based on our implementation efforts in the UNIX Operating System Environment. At the same time, results of performance evaluation are presented to demonstrate the implementation of defined protocol. The testing of performance analysis is performed on the PACS prototype node.