Present status of PACS at Kyoto University Hospital

The authors' experimental picture archiving and communications system (in operation since 1985) has been expanded to integrate all the digital imaging modalities, such as CT, MR imaging, digital subtraction angiography, and computed radiography. A fiber-optic LAN supports these imaging modalities, a jukebox-style optical disk library, a laser film printer, a magnetic tape station, and a film digitizer. In the new imaging workstation, the image memory (with 64-Mbyte random-access memory [RAM]) and the 1.2-Gbyte magnetic disk speed up the image-handling operation. The system functions as both the hard-copy and the electronic-archiving system, which makes possible the storage and on-line retrieval of digital medical-image data