PACS: construction and application to medical image enhancement

We describe the construction of a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) in the Tri-Service General Hospital (TSGH) of Taiwan, and apply a fuzzy technique to process medical images taken from this system. A PACS consists of image and data acquisition, storage, and display subsystems integrated by various digital networks. Based on PACS, we combine fuzzy logic with a knowledge base to carry out medical image processing. The fuzzy image processing is used at the display workstation to improve the diagnostic value of the images. Experimental results show that the method can detect image edges successfully.