A Nuclear Medicine Pacs and Ris

Abstract

Currently the images of nuclear medicine institutions are stored on magnetic media. The documentation is done with hardcopies. Officially magnetic media are not accepted for documentation purpose and hardcopies do not allow further processing. The access to the original data is time consuming and personal intensive. There is a demand to store at least the original information cheaply, safely and direct accessibly. The appearence of the optical disks together with a jukebox facilitates digital archives at least for nuclear medicine. As a prerequisit it is necessary to connect all imaging devices through its data systems within a nuclear medicine institution to a local area net (LAN) forming a PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) Data compatibility must be fulfilled as well as a positive patient identification. Quality controls must provide for data security and reliability. An effective retrieval system must serve for fast access to the archives. PACS and RIS (Radiological Information System) must built a unified system. Such a local net in addition should be connected to the HIS (Hospital Information System) in order to reduce the administration work in nuclear medicine. A prototype of a nuclear medicine system is in use at the University of Ulm since 1988, wich will be hooked to the HIS in 1990. Since PACS currently is developed mainly for the other modalities (CT, MR, DSA, DR) through the industry, nuclear medicine should participate in this development with its particular needs.