A practical fast method for medical imaging transmission based on the DICOM protocol

The standard format for medical imaging storage and transmission is Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM). Nowadays, and specifically with large amounts of medical images acquired by modern modalities, the need for fast data transmission between DICOM application entities is evident. In some applications, particularly those aiming to provide real-time services, this demand is critical. This paper introduces a method which provides a fast and simple way of image transmission by utilizing the DICOM protocol. The current implementations of DICOM protocol usually care more about connecting DICOM application entities. In the process of connecting two DICOM application entities, the format of the transmission (Transfer Syntax) is agreed upon. In this crucial step, the two entities choose an encoding that is supported by both and if one entity does not support compression the other one cannot use that option. In the proposed method, we use a pair of interfaces to deal with this issue and provide a fast method for medical data transmission between any two DICOM application entities. These interfaces use both compression and multi-threading techniques to transfer the images. The interfaces can be used without any change to the current DICOM application entities. In fact, the interfaces listen to the incoming messages from the DICOM application entities, intercept the messages, and carry out the data transmission. The experimental results show about 22% speed-up in Local Area Networks (LANs) and about 13-14 times speed-up in Wide Area Networks (WANs).