Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

DICOM relay over the cloud

  • Review Article
  • Published:
International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Healthcare institutions worldwide have adopted picture archiving and communication system (PACS) for enterprise access to images, relying on Digital Imaging Communication in Medicine (DICOM) standards for data exchange. However, communication over a wider domain of independent medical institutions is not well standardized. A DICOM-compliant bridge was developed for extending and sharing DICOM services across healthcare institutions without requiring complex network setups or dedicated communication channels.

Methods

A set of DICOM routers interconnected through a public cloud infrastructure was implemented to support medical image exchange among institutions. Despite the advantages of cloud computing, new challenges were encountered regarding data privacy, particularly when medical data are transmitted over different domains. To address this issue, a solution was introduced by creating a ciphered data channel between the entities sharing DICOM services.

Results

Two main DICOM services were implemented in the bridge: Storage and Query/Retrieve. The performance measures demonstrated it is quite simple to exchange information and processes between several institutions. The solution can be integrated with any currently installed PACS-DICOM infrastructure. This method works transparently with well-known cloud service providers.

Conclusions

Cloud computing was introduced to augment enterprise PACS by providing standard medical imaging services across different institutions, offering communication privacy and enabling creation of wider PACS scenarios with suitable technical solutions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Huang HK (2004) PACS and imaging informatics: basic principles and applications. Wiley & Blackwell, Hoboken

    Book  Google Scholar 

  2. DICOM-P18 (2009) Digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM), Part 18: Web Access to DICOM Persistent Objects (WADO). National Electrical Manufacturers Association

  3. Rimal B, Choi E (2009) A Conceptual approach for taxonomical spectrum of cloud computing. Ubiquitous information technologies & applications. In: ICUT ’09—proceedings of the 4th international conference Fukuoka, pp 1–6

  4. Rosenthal A, Mork P, Li MH, Stanford J, Koester D, Reynolds P (2010) Cloud computing: a new business paradigm for biomedical information sharing. J Biomed Inform 43(2): 342–353

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Huang HK (2010) PACS and imaging informatics: basic principles and applications. 2nd edn. New Jersey, Wiley & Blackwell, Hoboken

    Google Scholar 

  6. Vaquero LM, Rodero-Merino L, Caceres J, Lindner M (2008) A break in the clouds: towards a cloud definition. ACM SIGCOMM Comput Commun Rev 39(1): 50–55

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Ribeiro LS, Bastião L, Costa C, Oliveira JL (2010) EMAIL-P2P GATEWAY to distributed medical imaging repositories. In: HealthInf. Valencia: Spain

  8. Hajjat M, Sun X, Sung Y-WE, Maltz D, Rao S, Sripanidkulchai K, Tawarmalani M (2010) Cloudward bound: planning for beneficial migration of enterprise applications to the cloud. SIGCOMM Comput Commun Rev 40(4): 243–254

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Amazon Simple Storage Service. https://s3.amazonaws.com/ Available in: June 2011

  10. Google App Engine (GAE). http://code.google.com/appengine/Available in: June 2011

  11. Windows Azure Platform. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/ Available in: June 2011

  12. Weisser G, Engelmann U, Ruggiero S, Runa A, Schr^ter A, Baur S, Walz M (2007) Teleradiology applications with DICOM-e-mail. Eur Radiol 17(5): 1331–1340

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Hernandez JA, Acuna CJ, de Castro MV, Marcos E, López M, Malpica N (2007) Web-PACS for multicenter clinical trials. Inf Technol Biomed IEEE Trans 11(1): 87–93

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Yang C, Chen C, Yang M (2010) Implementation of a medical image file accessing system in co-allocation data grids. Future Gener Comput Sys 26(8): 1127–1140

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Sharma A, Pan T, Cambazoglu BB, Gurcan M, Kurc T, Saltz J (2009) VirtualPACS–a federating gateway to access remote image data resources over the grid. J Digit Imaging 22(1): 1–10

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  16. Liu BJ, Zhou MZ, Documet J (2005) Utilizing data grid architecture for the backup and recovery of clinical image data. Comput Med Imaging Graph 29(2–3): 95–102

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  17. Huang H, Zhang A, Liu B, Zhou Z, Documet J, King N, Chan L (2005) Data grid for large-scale medical image archive and analysis. ACM, New York, NY, USA pp 1005–1013

  18. Chen C, Wang W (2010) Implementation of a medical image file accessing system on cloud computing. In: Computational science and engineering (CSE). Hong Kong, China

  19. (IHE) ItHE: Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing for Imaging (XDS-I)

  20. Ribeiro LS, Costa C, Oliveira JL (2011) Current trends in archiving and transmission of medical images, medical imaging. In: Erondu OJ (ed) In tech. ISBN 978-953-307-774-1

  21. Zhang J, Zhang K, Yang Y, Sun J, Ling T, Wang G, Ling Y, Peng D (2011) Grid-based implementation of XDS-I as part of image-enabled EHR for regional healthcare in Shanghai. Int J Comput Assist Radiol Surg 6(2): 273–284

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. DICOM-P7 (2009) Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM), Part 7: message exchange. National Electrical Manufacturers Association

  23. Pianykh OS (2008) Digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM): a practical introduction and survival guide. Springer, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  24. Osirix DICOM Viewer. http://www.osirix-viewer.com/ Available in: 2011

  25. Ratib O, Rosset A (2006) Open-source software in medical imaging: development of OsiriX. Int J Comput Assist Radiol Surg 1(4): 187–196

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. DCMTK http://dicom.offis.de/ Available in: (2011)

  27. Conquest DICOM Software. http://ingenium.home.xs4all.nl/dicom.htmlAvailable in: June 2011

  28. PubNub. http://www.pubnub.com/. Available in: June 2011

  29. Costa C, Ferreira C, Bastião L, Ribeiro L, Silva A, Oliveira J (2010) Dicoogle-an Open Source Peer-to-Peer PACS. J Digit Imaging 24(5): 848–856

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Ribeiro LS, Costa C, Oliveira JL. A proxy of DICOM services. In: SPIE Medical Imaging. Diego, CA, USA, 76280L

  31. Marcus DS, Olsen TR, Ramaratnam M, Buckner RL (2007) The extensible neuroimaging archive toolkit. Neuroinformatics 5(1): 11–33

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidade de Aveiro—DETI/IEETA, Aveiro, Portugal

    Luís A. Bastião Silva, Carlos Costa & José Luis Oliveira

Authors
  1. Luís A. Bastião Silva
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Carlos Costa
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. José Luis Oliveira
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Luís A. Bastião Silva.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Silva, L.A.B., Costa, C. & Oliveira, J.L. DICOM relay over the cloud. Int J CARS 8, 323–333 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-012-0785-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-012-0785-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation