A Layered Storage Structure For Images Confronted With The Use Of X-Ray Images In A Hospital

In modern hospitals the attention paid to the problem of lending and archiving of images is increasing. In almost every (big) hospital complaints are heard concerning missing X-ray images and lack of storage space. The use of the computer and digital storage systems might lead to a solution of these problems. However enormous amounts of data are involved, ranging per image from 128 kbytes for a CT-scan to over 2 Mbytes for a thorax X-ray. For the Leiden university hospital (940 beds) this implies a daily production of about 8000 Mbytes of uncompressed data after digitisation. At this moment, a study is in progress carried out by the central development organisation (BAZIS) of a group of Dutch cooperating hospitals, aiming at a well founded choice of a system framework. During this study extensive use is made of the information available from the existing Hospital Information System (HIS). The acquired data will be used as input to a simulation model, which should give more insight into the behaviour and necessary characteristics of the memory configuration required. This configuration will consist of different layers.