Multimedia technologies in medicine: the role of emerging standards

Like other domains, medical informatics has adopted separate service models to acquire, distribute and process multimedia data. Proprietary technologies, combined with incompatible or limited standards and an increasing variety of open enabling technologies are making it very complex to integrate medical data processing systems or decide about their evolution. Nevertheless, the separate models are converging towards an integrated multimedia service model. Within this context, we propose an assessment of the adequacy of emerging multimedia standards, considering their potential relevance in medical applications. The appropriateness of selected multimedia solutions is evaluated, according to user requirements conditioned by spatial and temporal interaction constraints. Identified deficiencies lead us to describe the emerging multimedia standards' features that could provide improvements. JPEG-2000, MPEG-4 and MPEG-7 are discussed, emphasizing their important characteristics, application scenarios and potential worth.