High-performance telemedicine information management

The rapid advances in high performance global communication have accelerated cooperative image-based medical services to a new frontier. Traditional image-based medical services such as radiology and diagnostic consultation can now fully utilize multimedia technologies to provide novel services, including remote cooperative medical triage, distributed virtual simulation of operations, as well as cross-country collaborative medical research and training. Fast (efficient) and easy (flexible) retrieval of relevant images remains a critical requirement for the provision of remote medical services. This paper describes the database system requirements and presents a system architecture of a distributed multimedia database system, MISSION-DBS, which has been designed to fulfill the goals of Project MISSION (medical imaging support via satellite integrated optical network)-an experimental high performance gigabit satellite communication network linking remote supercomputing power, medical image databases, and 3D visualization capabilities, in addition to medical expertise anywhere and anytime around the globe, The MISSION-DBS design employs a synergistic fusion of techniques in distributed databases (DDB) and artificial intelligence (AI) for storing, migrating, accessing, and exploring images. The efficient storage and retrieval of voluminous image information is achieved by integrating DDB modeling and AI techniques for image processing while the flexible retrieval mechanisms are accomplished by combining attribute-based and content-based retrievals. (C) 1999 Academic Press. Inc.