Application of a visualization method of image data base in nuclear cardiology

Medical imaging is undoubtedly one of the medical branches which benefited at most by the offsprings of computer science development. We present here a visualization software of image data base, making use of the last innovations in the field of multimedia application. The objective of such a software is to provide a reference tool for a given medical specialty offering at the same time, a high quality iconography, a rigorous content of the comments and the matching of graphical interfaces. Applied to nuclear cardiology and implanted on CD ROM, it contains a given number of clinical cases (around 150) which sweep quasi-exhaustively the subject. Each case centered around scintigraphic examination (myocardial tomographs, ventriculographs, SPECT, etc) makes available 'static' pictures (series of cross sections, planispheric images, ECG), animated cartoons (synchronized series, 3D visualization, etc) and also the clinical history of the patient and the records of complementary examinations (coronary-graphic, for instance). Being independent of the image data base which it visualizes, our software is easily applicable to other nuclear medicine specialties (neurology, renal exploration) and also to other modalities. It is multilingual already (French and English) and soon will be supplemented by a code dedicated to knowledge assessment intended to be an efficient tool in education and continuous formation. A Macintosh version will be soon obtainable and a demonstration diskette is free available on request