PACS de patologia: uma plataforma centralizada para a gestão de imagem médica de patologia

The clinical area of digital Pathology is still giving its first steps in the development of interoperable solutions that enable the distributed acquisition, storage, and visualization of medical images, including diagnostic support tools. Nowadays, digital management solutions use proprietary image formats and communication protocols that are not compatible with the DICOM standard. Moreover, the available technologies are not mature enough to support the practice of medicine in an area where scanned images can reach several gigapixels, requiring new engineering approaches to support huge volumes of data, in the order of gigabytes per study, that need to be consumed in real time. This dissertation aims to research and develop new technologies and associated information systems, capable of supporting the digital acquisition of pathology images, their centralized archive, sharing, and collaborative review with decision support tools. The result is an innovative web solution, focused on increasing productivity, with safe diagnostics and based on normalized protocols. A common web browser was transformed into a professional workstation that is able to access the image repository at any place and time, regardless of the operating system and without any prior installation.A área de Patologia clínica digital ainda se encontra a dar os primeiros passos no desenvolvimento de soluções interoperáveis que permitam a aquisição, arquivo e visualização distribuída da imagem, incluindo ferramentas de suporte ao diagnóstico. Os atuais cenários de revisão à distância usam aplicações proprietárias que não são interoperáveis com a norma DICOM. Isto deve-se ao facto de a tecnologia não estar suficientemente madura para apoiar a prática clínica numa área em que uma imagem digitalizada pode atingir vários giga-pixels, requerendo novas soluções de engenharia para suportar grandes volumes de dados, da ordem de gigabyte por estudo, que necessitam de ser consumidos remotamente em tempo real. Esta dissertação teve como objetivo estudar e desenvolver tecnologias e sistemas de informação que permitam a aquisição digital da imagem de patologia, o seu arquivo centralizado, a partilha e revisão colaborativa com ferramentas de suporte à decisão. O resultado é uma solução Web inovadora, de elevada produtividade, diagnóstico seguro e baseada em processos e protocolos normalizados. Um Web-browser comum foi transformado numa estação de trabalho capaz de aceder ao arquivo em qualquer altura e qualquer lugar, independentemente do sistema operativo, computador ou dispositivo móvel.Mestrado em Engenharia Informátic

Web-based Stereoscopic Collaboration for Medical Visualization

Medizinische Volumenvisualisierung ist ein wertvolles Werkzeug zur Betrachtung von Volumen- daten in der medizinischen Praxis und Lehre. Eine interaktive, stereoskopische und kollaborative Darstellung in Echtzeit ist notwendig, um die Daten vollständig und im Detail verstehen zu können. Solche Visualisierung von hochauflösenden Daten ist jedoch wegen hoher Hardware- Anforderungen fast nur an speziellen Visualisierungssystemen möglich. Remote-Visualisierung wird verwendet, um solche Visualisierung peripher nutzen zu können. Dies benötigt jedoch fast immer komplexe Software-Deployments, wodurch eine universelle ad-hoc Nutzbarkeit erschwert wird. Aus diesem Sachverhalt ergibt sich folgende Hypothese: Ein hoch performantes Remote- Visualisierungssystem, welches für Stereoskopie und einfache Benutzbarkeit spezialisiert ist, kann für interaktive, stereoskopische und kollaborative medizinische Volumenvisualisierung genutzt werden. Die neueste Literatur über Remote-Visualisierung beschreibt Anwendungen, welche nur reine Webbrowser benötigen. Allerdings wird bei diesen kein besonderer Schwerpunkt auf die perfor- mante Nutzbarkeit von jedem Teilnehmer gesetzt, noch die notwendige Funktion bereitgestellt, um mehrere stereoskopische Präsentationssysteme zu bedienen. Durch die Bekanntheit von Web- browsern, deren einfach Nutzbarkeit und weite Verbreitung hat sich folgende spezifische Frage ergeben: Können wir ein System entwickeln, welches alle Aspekte unterstützt, aber nur einen reinen Webbrowser ohne zusätzliche Software als Client benötigt? Ein Proof of Concept wurde durchgeführt um die Hypothese zu verifizieren. Dazu gehörte eine Prototyp-Entwicklung, deren praktische Anwendung, deren Performanzmessung und -vergleich. Der resultierende Prototyp (CoWebViz) ist eines der ersten Webbrowser basierten Systeme, welches flüssige und interaktive Remote-Visualisierung in Realzeit und ohne zusätzliche Soft- ware ermöglicht. Tests und Vergleiche zeigen, dass der Ansatz eine bessere Performanz hat als andere ähnliche getestete Systeme. Die simultane Nutzung verschiedener stereoskopischer Präsen- tationssysteme mit so einem einfachen Remote-Visualisierungssystem ist zur Zeit einzigartig. Die Nutzung für die normalerweise sehr ressourcen-intensive stereoskopische und kollaborative Anatomieausbildung, gemeinsam mit interkontinentalen Teilnehmern, zeigt die Machbarkeit und den vereinfachenden Charakter des Ansatzes. Die Machbarkeit des Ansatzes wurde auch durch die erfolgreiche Nutzung für andere Anwendungsfälle gezeigt, wie z.B. im Grid-computing und in der Chirurgie

Ubiquitous volume rendering in the web platform

176 p.The main thesis hypothesis is that ubiquitous volume rendering can be achieved using WebGL. The thesis enumerates the challenges that should be met to achieve that goal. The results allow web content developers the integration of interactive volume rendering within standard HTML5 web pages. Content developers only need to declare the X3D nodes that provide the rendering characteristics they desire. In contrast to the systems that provide specific GPU programs, the presented architecture creates automatically the GPU code required by the WebGL graphics pipeline. This code is generated directly from the X3D nodes declared in the virtual scene. Therefore, content developers do not need to know about the GPU.The thesis extends previous research on web compatible volume data structures for WebGL, ray-casting hybrid surface and volumetric rendering, progressive volume rendering and some specific problems related to the visualization of medical datasets. Finally, the thesis contributes to the X3D standard with some proposals to extend and improve the volume rendering component. The proposals are in an advance stage towards their acceptance by the Web3D Consortium

A Community-Driven Validation Service for Standard Medical Imaging Objects

Digital medical imaging laboratories contain many distinct types of equipment provided by different manufacturers. Interoperability is a critical issue and the DICOM protocol is a de facto standard in those environments. However, manufacturers' implementation of the standard may have non-conformities at several levels, which will hinder systems' integration. Moreover, medical staff may be responsible for data inconsistencies when entering data. Those situations severely affect the quality of healthcare services since they can disrupt system operations. The existence of software able to confirm data quality and compliance with the DICOM standard is important for programmers, IT staff and healthcare technicians. Although there are a few solutions that try to accomplish this goal, they are unable to deal with certain situations that require user input. Furthermore, these cases usually require the setup of a working environment, which makes the sharing of validation information more difficult. This article proposes and describes the development of a Web DICOM validation service for the community. This solution requires no configuration by the user, promotes validation results share-ability in the community and preserves patient data privacy since files are de-identified on the client side.Comment: Computer Standards & Interfaces, 201

Ubiquitous volume rendering in the web platform

176 p.The main thesis hypothesis is that ubiquitous volume rendering can be achieved using WebGL. The thesis enumerates the challenges that should be met to achieve that goal. The results allow web content developers the integration of interactive volume rendering within standard HTML5 web pages. Content developers only need to declare the X3D nodes that provide the rendering characteristics they desire. In contrast to the systems that provide specific GPU programs, the presented architecture creates automatically the GPU code required by the WebGL graphics pipeline. This code is generated directly from the X3D nodes declared in the virtual scene. Therefore, content developers do not need to know about the GPU.The thesis extends previous research on web compatible volume data structures for WebGL, ray-casting hybrid surface and volumetric rendering, progressive volume rendering and some specific problems related to the visualization of medical datasets. Finally, the thesis contributes to the X3D standard with some proposals to extend and improve the volume rendering component. The proposals are in an advance stage towards their acceptance by the Web3D Consortium

3D Visualization Architecture for Building Applications Leveraging an Existing Validated Toolkit

The diagnostic radiology space and healthcare in general is a slow adopter of new software technologies and patterns. Despite the widespread embrace of mobile technology in recent years, altering the manner in which societies in developed countries live and communicate, diagnostic radiology has not unanimously adopted mobile technology for remote diagnostic review. Desktop applications in the diagnostic radiology space commonly leverage a validated toolkit. Such toolkits not only simplify desktop application development but minimize the scope of application validation. For these reasons, such a toolkit is an important piece of a company’s software portfolio. This thesis investigated an approach for leveraging a Java validated toolkit for the purpose of creating numerous ubiquitous applications for 3D diagnostic radiology. Just as in the desktop application space, leveraging such a toolkit minimizes the scope of ubiquitous application validation. Today, the most standard execution environment in an electronic device is an Internet browser; therefore, a ubiquitous application is web application. This thesis examines an approach where ubiquitous applications can be built using a viewport construct provided by a client-side ubiquitous toolkit that hides the client-server communication between the ubiquitous toolkit and the validated visualization toolkit. Supporting this communication is a Java RESTful web service wrapper around the validated visualization toolkit that essentially “webifies” the validated toolkit. Overall, this ubiquitous viewport is easily included in a ubiquitous application and supports remote visualization and manipulation of volumes on the widest range of electronic devices. Overall, this thesis provided a flexible and scalable approach to developing ubiquitous applications that leverage an existing validated toolkit that utilizes industry standard technologies, patterns, and best practices. This approach is significant because it supports easy ubiquitous application development and minimizes the scope of application validation, and allows medical professionals easy anytime and anywhere access to diagnostic images

DicoogleWeb: uma interface web para repositório de imagem médica

Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e TelemáticaDicoogle is an open-source software solution designed to manage the information workflow in a PACS as well as the archiving and indexing process of the arriving DICOM files. The current implementation can either be run in server mode (default) or used as a client to connect to another server instance of Dicoogle (via Java RMI). This enables simple access to client workstation within or outside a medical organization. This work will focus on adapting the current implementation of Dicoogle for the Web environment, allowing, system clients, to view medical images, on the majority of devices with network access.O Dicoogle é uma solução de software, em código fonte aberto, que foi desenhada para suportar o fluxo de informação num laboratório de imagem médica. Além disso, está dotado de um mecanismo de indexação que permite indexar todos os metadados contidos nos ficheiros DICOM do seu repositório. A actual implementação pode ser lançada em modo servidor (por omissão) mas também dispõem de um módulo gráfico cliente que pode conectar-se a qualquer instância servidor através de Java RMI. Isto proporciona um acesso simples a estações de trabalho clientes dentro ou fora de uma organização medica. Esta dissertação propõe e implementa uma solução que permite migrar o Dicoogle para ambiente Web. Para além de disponibilizar todas as funcionalidades da versão anterior, a versão Web oferece um conjunto de novos serviços e interface de acesso aos dados