Architecture of Cloud-Based Advanced Medical Image Visualization Solution

An advanced medical image visualization solution usually consists of several routine and advanced image processing and reading applications. It is capable of processing 2D and 3D images acquired from a wide-range of modalities such as CT, MR, AX etc. and pertaining to different clinical specialties like Cardiology, Neurology and Oncology. Such a solution also needs to seamlessly interface with the various entities in a hospital like the image-acquisition modalities, the Hospital Information System (HIS) and the Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS). Currently, using such a solution requires high-end dedicated infrastructure setup at the hospital site and dedicated trained staff for configuring and maintaining the system. A cloud-based solution for such advanced medical image visualization would provide tremendous benefits for hospitals in terms of saving on the initial investment, maintenance & upgrade cost and in terms of increased availability. Based on the cloud-based solution, a pay-per-use payment model would also enable several small hospitals, diagnostic centers, individual medical practitioners, research labs and universities to avail the benefits of advanced medical visualization at affordable costs thereby increasing the quality of patient care. However, building such a solution involves several unique challenges ranging from the nature of the medical image data that is huge in size to maintaining the security of patient health information. This paper describes the key challenges involved in building a cloud-based solution for advanced medical image visualization and proposes a generic architecture that effectively addresses these challenges. Real life performance results obtained from a cloud-solution implemented based on the proposed architecture, which was deployed at a private data center in Germany and accessed from India are also provided.