A Picture Archiving and Communication System based on an open and distributed architecture

The Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) under development at the University Hospital of Geneva is part of a large hospital information system and is intended as a hospital-wide image management system for radiological and non-radiological images. This system is based on an open architecture regrouping equipment from multiple vendors in a distributed topology. The image archival is organized in multiple locations geographically distributed in the hospital. These regional archives are logically linked together to provide a virtual access to all images generated from different imaging modalities.