Abstract
A medical image workstation designed to act as a cooperative dialogue partner in diagnostic radiology has been conceived, and a prototype has been made. The system can automatically select relevant information (eg, from current and previous examinations) and generate a meaningful and appropriate image arrangement on the display screen. For a number of routinely performed tasks in radiology, the users' interaction may be as simple as switching from one patient to the next. This is shown to considerably simplify and speed up radiological image access and presentation, saving the user time and effort. The cooperative system response is based on explicit (formalized and computer-accessible) models of diagnostic information requirements. These models are context dependent and take into account that diagnostic information needs vary with radiological work procedures, workstation users, and patient cases. Initial models have been acquired from expert radiologists in two European hospitals and were integrated in a cooperative workstation prototype. For the representation of models, rulebased and object-oriented techniques were applied. The rule base was designed with a distinct modular structure, separating between rule sets for general, task-dependent, and user-dependent information requirements. The installed rule-based mechanism also offers a solution for the automatic prefetching of images to avoid transmission delays in the course of diagnostic work sessions. The first part of the report reviews the objectives for the design of cooperative workstation user interfaces and explains the benefits from the users' point of view. In the second part, the acquisition, structuring, formalization, and representation of context-dependent information requirement models is described. The rule-based model is explained using examples. A layered workstation architecture consisting of model, object, and real-time layers is presented. Difficulties in the implementation of cooperative workstations are discussed that point to future research topics and standardization efforts.
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The work described here was part of the HIPACS project funded by the European Community under grant AIM (Advanced Informatics in Medicine) A1008 and is now funded as part of the EuriPACS project under grant A2009.
Reprinted with permission from Medical Imaging VI: Picture Archiving and Communications Systems, Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, Vol 1653, 1992.
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Wendler, T., Grewer, R., Mönnich, K.J. et al. Cooperative image workstation based on explicit models of diagnostic information requirements. J Digit Imaging 5, 230–241 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03167804
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03167804