Development Of A Physician-Friendly Digital Image Display Console

A high speed fiber optic network for the transmission of digital images has been under development for the last three years at our Hospital. This network utilizes a ring architecture with token passing contention handling. Radiographs are digitized with a high resolution camera. Images can be viewed at either high or low resolution. The software for this four node Medical Image Management System (MIMS) is now complete and is undergoing trial runs. Clinical tests begin on March 1, 1986. This paper will focus on the philosophy, evolution and the present state of the interfaces that exist between the system and the physician. Care has been taken to develop an interface that is fast, powerful and error-free. Though simple to use, it presents the physician with a number of powerful options to manipulate the image to facilitate effective interpretation. An effort has been made to incorporate those functions that are useful to the physician. We tried to avoid cluttering the user menu with an array of less-used options.