Integrating clinical information repositories: A framework for

Abstract

We propose a framework for distributed analysis of medical images, in order to integrate data pooled from multiple studies and different clinical sites. We perform distributed post-processing of the data at their local site, coordinated by a central computing node. The clinical focus is to assist diagnosis by detecting Regions of Interest (ROIs) that can be used for distinguishing different clinical cases. The clinical cases are collected in spatially distributed centers. The features that are extracted from the image ROIs are useful in performing classification, clustering and similarity searches aiming to facilitate diagnosis and guide medical treatment. The system is based on a central information fusion center that communicates with the remote sites and coordinates the distributed analysis. The proposed distributed medical image analysis model facilitates knowledge sharing among clinicians and information integration, while the bandwidth requirements are kept to a minimum