Alex Towbin MD, Presenter: Author, Amirsys Inc Shareholder, Merge Healthcare Incorporated Consultant, Guerbet SA

1) Describe the concept of an enterprise imaging archive. 2) Describe the differences between DICOM-based imaging and non-DICOM-based imaging. 3) Identify the unique challenges associated with incorporating non-DICOM images into an enterprise imaging archive.

Over the past 20 years, the field of radiology has built an impressive digital infrastructure, automating many portions of the imaging process from the time of order entry through image distribution.  With the advent of small, low-cost, high quality digital cameras, other medical specialties have turned to imaging to visualize and document disorders yet, they have not implemented the same type of digital infrastructure as radiology.    Today, thousands of medical images are obtained in hospitals each day.  With the increasing reliance on imaging, there is a greater need to build systems and processes to obtain, store, and distribute these images across the enterprise so that health care providers can better care for their patients.  Even though many of these problems have been solved in radiology, the solutions are not easily transferred to other specialties due to the differences in imaging hardware and the image acquisition workflow.    The purpose of this talk is to describe the problems facing hospitals as they begin to build enterprise imaging archives and to discuss potential solutions to these problems.

Towbin, A, Challenges in Enterprise Imaging.  Radiological Society of North America 2014 Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting, - ,Chicago IL. http://archive.rsna.org/2014/11033117.html