Health Imaging & IT - October 2007 - (Page S4) Buyer’s Guide - Decision Making for 3D Vendor Selection Planning for advanced visualization and workflow has become a critical element of any imaging practice involving modern MDCT and MR modalities, so what are the right questions to ask, and what are the pitfalls? Here are some pointers that can help you to avoid purchasing a glorious 3D Technicolor paperweight! What’s wrong with the 3D that comes with the scanner, anyway? Generally speaking, nothing is wrong with it… as far as it goes. Most CT scanners come bundled with a 3D workstation offered as part of the package, and these workstations often have good software for providing 3D interpretation support. The problem is that there is usually only one supplied per CT, and purchasing an additional one is very expensive. The CT technologist usually needs access to the workstation for various management tasks, and so there is competition for this valuable resource that can only be used by one person at a time. As a result, physicians often have to interpret from 2D stations looking at static images created by technologists, precluding the possibility of pursuing a diagnostic decision tree that requires multiple consecutive questions to be addressed in 3D. The key problem that has arisen with the introduction of MDCT is how to provide volumetric interpretation support to interpreting and referring physicians, and this is where the “bundled” workstation falls down. Failing to plan for a broader 3D solution is planning to fail… What’s a thin client and why do we need it? Making advanced visualization available to a broad enterprise poses some technological challenges. This is not like browsing the web where the processing power required is small and the data volume transferred is manageable. Modern MDCT datasets can run to gigabytes and the processing power needed to render them in real time 3D pushes the very limits of modern computing technology. As a result there is tremendous value in being able to avoid moving the large CT datasets around to multiple computers across the enterprise, and in being able to avoid reliance on the processing power of whatever computer may be available out there to do the 3D rendering itself. This is where the client-server architecture comes in and this is where it brings such an advantage. All the data can be centralized into one server, which can easily be located close to the modalities or PACS, such that the transfer is fast. This server, if equipped with a huge amount of processing power, can then provide rendering services to many computers across the enterprise which can run a simple application to control the server and receive a real time stream of images for display. This effectively turns every computer in the enterprise into a 3D workstation and if the power and feature set of the server is adequate, this becomes a really elegant, viable and cost-effective solution for delivering advanced image processing to everyone who needs it. 4 This “thin client” approach, when implemented properly, is also excellent for PACS integration because, since it makes no significant demands on the client-side hardware, it can easily run alongside the PACS software without imparing its performance and still be available for instant access in 3D. Key questions to ask: What kind of rendering technology is used on the server side? Is it CPU/GPU based which has performance limitations, especially when serving many users at once, or is a dedicated medical volume rendering hardware solution used which can power many concurrent clients accessing large datasets? What is the clinical functionality? What features are missing on the thin client software compared to the conventional stand-alone workstation? Can you live without them? What is the workflow for sharing work between the workstations and clients? Can a technologist prepare a dataset for interpretation and then deliver it in a form that can be interacted with and further manipulated on the client side? What kind of administration and IT capability does the system have. This is now an enterprise server and it needs to be professionally equipped to meet enterprise IT needs like security and account management. How much bandwidth is used when a user is interacting with data? Buyer’s Guide w w w. t e r a re c o n . c o m http://www.terarecon.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.