Medical optical signal processing, enhancing the quality of care for the 21/sup st/ century

The domestic medical landscape is experiencing unprecedented change. Cost containment and resource consolidation pressures are forcing healthcare providers to turn to sources outside the medical community to improve the quality of care with existing medical resources. The paper introduces the concept of Medical Optical Signal Processing (MOSP) as a transitioning technology to enhance the capabilities of present and future medical imaging systems. In particular, the technology concentrates on detecting and identifying key pathologic features within two-dimensional medical imagery. Optical Signal Processing (OSP) technology has shown excellent signal-to-noise discriminations and pattern recognition rates of over 2000 comparisons per second on various image types. A brief overview of optical correlator fundamentals acquaints the reader with the technology. As part of the overview, a comparison of processing rates (operations per second) between traditional digital and new optical processing is presented. The core of the paper presents several optical processing research applications and discusses transitioning these methodologies to assist in the analysis of pathological features. The authors conclude that MOSP is the technology needed to improve the quality of care with existing medical resources.