Health Imaging & IT - October 2007 - (Page S3) sults in order for physicians to confirm the findings. Both vendor and user communities acknowledge that serverside 3D thin client technology is the only viable way to provide ubiquitous advanced visualization functionality. Geoffrey D. Rubin, M.D., Chief of Cardiovascular Imaging at Stanford University’s Department of Radiology, said that he does not believe that adoption of 3D visualization by physicians would be as prolific without the introduction of client-server based software. “More than any single technological advance over the past ten years, I believe it is the introduction of this system that has ushered in the widespread use of 3D visualization for primary data interaction by radiologists and clinicians within our medical center.” Eliot L. Siegel, M.D., chief of imaging of the VA Maryland Health Care System and Vice Chairman of Information Systems at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore is emphatic. “I’m absolutely convinced that the only model that is going to be sustainable and move forward is the server side rendering model.” Dr. Siegel predicts that in the near future all advanced visualization tools will be available to all users via a fully integrated PACS workstation and through web access.” TeraRecon is playing the leadership role in meeting these new challenges. AquariusNET is already seamlessly integrated with most PACS. The company’s new iNtuition™ workflow architecture is designed to provide a customizable workflow with personalized preferences activated upon user login and is based on the concept of “Automate”, “Validate” and “Read”. The AquariusAPS™ server performs automated preprocessing tasks based upon predefined user protocols. Upon receipt of images from the CT scanner, it searches its internal “directory” of anatomy and automatically applies various processing “filters”. AquariusAPS can automatically segment bones and vessels, remove the CT table, extract luminal centerlines of vessels, and automatically detect and label variEnterprise 3D Workflow ous parts of the anatomy. Preprocessed images are saved as portable scenes that are presented for validation. After validation, the study is ready for final interpretation, potentially saving up to 80% of the manual processing and preparation steps traditionally required when performing a 3D interpretation. “The great thing about the Aquarius iNtuition platform is that you almost feel you have a dedicated 3D technologist working for you behind the scenes,” said Dr. Christopher Herzog, Chief of Radiology at the Red Cross Hospital in Munich, Germany. “Certainly, a competent physician can get to the answer eventually on more or less any 3D workstation, but when 80% of the routine work is done for you before you even open the case, it’s a great benefit that allows us to focus precious time on clinical interpretation, rather than struggling to prepare the case to a presentable form.” This new architecture is designed to fit the needs of a wide variety of imaging scenarios, from a single hospital with one CT scanner, to expansive healthcare enterprises with numerous locations and potentially hundreds of users. “The next generation of 3D volumetric imaging systems needs to be extraordinarily flexible and global in scope,” explains Robert Taylor, Ph.D., executive vice president and chief operating officer of TeraRecon. “The software needs to be transparently tailored to the diverse requirements of individual users to further enhance productivity. It needs to be integrated with any PACS or other healthcare information system and designed for a “single portal” concept of access to all the patient data and software a physician requires.” w w w. t e r a re c o n . c o m 3 http://www.terarecon.com
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