[Gnumed-devel] Image-acquisition, storage and reporting pluggin

[vbanait]

Hi

Single image is worth 1000 words of description. Last two decades have revolutionised diagnostic medicine due to development of imaging techniques.

Clinical images are acquired by various ways in medicine. Pathologist obtain it through microscope.

Radiologist obtain through ct, mri or ultrasound. Endoscopist obtain them using endoscope or c-arm. Dermatologist can document them using digital camera.

Though radiological images are DICOM compatible, others are typically non-DICOM compatible. Many database programes are available for DICOM images. But for others eg. Endoscopy images, very few options are there. These programs do not integrate with emrs. Moreover, none is available in gnu domain!

Gnumed has a image acquisition module. There is need to expand it to use it with above mentioned setting.

To enable development, I would like to elaborate the requirement further in next few paras.

1. Registratation of patient: gnumed already has it

2. Image acquisition: Images are acquired using a image capture card (tv tunner card) which is connected to endoscopic processor by s-video cable (olympus). Other endoscopes (fusinone) connect using composite output from processor.

3. Images are captured using a foot switch with two buttons. These buttons are configured using games controller in windows. I am not aware how it is done on linux. One switch is used to capture images. Other is for video.

4. Image format can be anything (bmp, jpg, png etc). Though eps should be preferred, if we plan to use LaTex for reporting template (I may be wrong)

5. Images are then stored in database. Tagging for image search may be an additional capability.

6. Care has to be taken regarding video-format, as it may take up lot of space.

7. Image editing: Basic editing features such as annotation, marking the lesion, and cropping may be sufficient.

8. Reporting: for reporting an images, images need to be selected and then exported to the reporting templates. Templates which allow one, two, five, six and nine images on single page can be created and allowed as a choice to the user to select one from them. The template should allow writing the desired text for reporting purposes. Something like this..

patient demography

images 1, 2, 3 | vertically or horizontally placed

images 4, 5,6 |

<text of report>

signature of reporting clinician

Additional features that may be expected

1. export of images to presentation software/beamer

2. automated sending sms of a conclusion of procedure to referring doctor

3. selection and export of images to a folder : interesting images

4. comparision between images (You may just want to compare a lesion seen days before with the present status

I would like to know what you think

regards

vaibhav