Early experience with a picture archiving and communication system for X-ray CT

A network using fiberoptic ring architecture has been implemented to connect an x-ray CT unit with an image work station and optical disk storage unit. The work station has three noninterlaced cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitors of 1,024 X 1,024 pixels. The optical disk system stores 32 optical disk cartridges (2.6 Gbytes per cartridge). A general-purpose interface bus is used for communication between the CT unit and the network interface unit. Transfer time from CT to interface unit is 40 kbyte/second, 5 seconds per image. On-line data acquisition, long-term archiving, and CT interpretation using CRTs have been tested and the system has been working for 3 months in a clinical environment