Issues In Automated Handling And Archiving Of Medical Diagnostic Images

Abstract

Medical images constitute by far the biggest volume of data generated in health care. For example a single sheet of cherit X-ray film may contain as many as 16+ megabytes of information. An U S . average 40@ bed hospital produces approximately 300,000 sheets of X-ray film per year which corresponds to .5x10l2 bytes of information. The customary requirement is to archive films for seven years from the date of origination. Hence the volume equivalent to 3 5 ~ 1 0 ~ ~ bytes (=35 terabytes=35 million megabytes) of image data is presently stored on film and sporadically accessed in an average US hospital.