Mobile consultant: Evaluation of additional services

As the need for mobility in the medical world increases, newer systems and applications came to light; many of them based on wireless and mobile networks. PDA based systems were presented in the past, capable of videoconferencing and transmitting high quality images between a roaming consultant and a fixed point in the hospital. These systems not only had desirable characteristics but also incorporated additional services that were found of value: paging, Voice over IP calling, Internet, email, intranet, patient record update, etc. This paper presents an engineering and clinical evaluation of those additional services based on both objective and subjective criteria. It concludes that such complementary services can be desirable as they increase personnel mobility, utilize the hospital resources more efficiently while at the same time increase productivity and decrease the cost of hardware and communications

Mobile consultant: Combining total mobility with constant access

Minimizing the time required for a medical consultant to offer his/her expert opinion, can be viewed as a life-saving procedure. We have designed and tested an integrated system that will allow a medical consultant to freely move either within, or outside the hospital, while still maintaining constant contact with the patients via videoconferencing and high-resolution imaging. The above system is explained in this paper, along with its advantages and its potential limitations. Conclusively, we demonstrate that such a system further increases the mobility of the medical consultant, while improving the healthcare service

Mobile consultant: Combining total mobility with constant access

Minimizing the time required for a medical consultant to offer his/her expert opinion, can be viewed as a life-saving procedure. We have designed and tested an integrated system that will allow a medical consultant to freely move either within, or outside the hospital, while still maintaining constant contact with the patients via videoconferencing and high-resolution imaging. The above system is explained in this paper, along with its advantages and its potential limitations. Conclusively, we demonstrate that such a system further increases the mobility of the medical consultant, while improving the healthcare service

PDA-based system for monitoring electromagnetic signals

The development of a mobile system for receiving, storing, and displaying electromagnetic-signals (EM) at specific frequencies using mobile devices and wireless networks, is of extreme interest, especially when the final means of display is a PDA, a very light and compact handheld device. In the present study, an application is developed for remote monitoring of EM-signals preceding seismic events. The particular advantages and challenges faced when developing such application are explained and future work in this area is presented

Using handheld devices for real-time wireless teleconsultation

Recent advances in the hardware of handheld devices, opened up the way for newer applications in the healthcare sector, and more specifically, in the teleconsultation field. Out of these devices, this paper focuses on the services that personal digital assistants and smartphones can provide to improve the speed, quality and ease of delivering a medical opinion from a distance and laying the ground for an all-wireless hospital. In that manner, PDAs were used to wirelessly support the viewing of digital imaging and communication in medicine (DICOM) images and to allow for mobile videoconferencing while within the hospital. Smartphones were also used to carry still images, multiframes and live video outside the hospital. Both of these applications aimed at increasing the mobility of the consultant while improving the healthcare service

A smartphone-based Teleradiology system

The development of a teleradiology application for remote monitoring and processing of patient image data using 2nd generation mobile devices with enhanced network services, is of extreme interest, especially when the final means of display is a smartphone, a very light and compact handheld device. In the following paper the development of applications, that are responsible for remote monitoring and processing of medical images, is investigated

Computer assisted characterization of cervical intervertebral disc degeneration in MRI

A texture-based pattern recognition system is proposed for the automatic characterization of cervical intervertebral disc degeneration from saggital magnetic resonance images of the spine. A case sample of 50 manually segmented ROIs, corresponding to 25 normal and 25 degenerated discs, was analyzed and textural features were generated from each disc-ROI. Student's t-test verified the existence of statistically significant differences between textural feature values generated from normal and degenerated discs. This finding is indicative of disc image texture differentiation due to the degeneration of the disc. The generated features were employed in the design of a pattern recognition system based on the Least Squares Minimum Distance classifier. The system achieved a classification accuracy of 94{%} and it may be of value to physicians for the assessment of cervical intervertebral disc degeneration in MRI

A Multi-Element Detector System for Intelligent Imaging: I-ImaS

I-ImaS is a European project aiming to produce new, intelligent x-ray imaging systems using novel APS sensors to create optimal diagnostic images. Initial systems concentrate on mammography and encephalography. Later development will yield systems for other types of radiography such as industrial QA and homeland security. The I-ImaS system intelligence, due to APS technology and FPGAs, allows real-time analysis of data during image acquisition, giving the capability to build a truly adaptive imaging system with the potential to create images with maximum diagnostic information within given dose constraints. A companion paper deals with the DAQ system and preliminary characterization. This paper considers the laboratory x-ray characterization of the detector elements of the I-ImaS system. The characterization of the sensors when tiled to form a strip detector will be discussed, along with the appropriate correction techniques formulated to take into account the misalignments between individual sensors within the array. Preliminary results show that the detectors have sufficient performance to be used successfully in the initial mammographic and encephalographic I-ImaS systems under construction and this paper will further discuss the testing of these systems and the iterative processes used for intelligence upgrade in order to obtain the optimal algorithms and setting