Video clip transfer of radiological images using a mobile telephone in emergency neurosurgical consultations (3G Multi-Media Messaging Service) (original) (raw)
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Conference proceedings : ... Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Annual Conference, 2007
Medical practice is characterized by a high degree of heterogeneity in collaborative and cooperative patient care. Fast and effective communication between medical practitioners can improve patient care. In medical imaging, the fast delivery of medical reports to referring medical practitioners is a major component of cooperative patient care. Recently, mobile phones have been actively deployed in telemedicine applications. The mobile phone is an ideal medium to achieve faster delivery of reports to the referring medical practitioners. In this study, we developed an electronic medical report delivery system from a medical imaging department to the mobile phones of the referring doctors. The system extracts a text summary of medical report and a screen capture of diagnostic medical image in JPEG format, which are transmitted to 3G GSM mobile phones.
Multimedia Messaging Service teleradiology in the provision of emergency neurosurgery services
Surgical Neurology, 2007
Neurosurgical emergencies constitute a significant proportion of workload of a tertiary neurosurgical service. Prompt diagnosis and emergent institution of definitive treatment are critical to reduce neurological mortality and morbidity. Diagnosis is highly dependent on accurate interpretation of scans by experienced clinicians. This expertise may not be readily available especially after office hours because many neurosurgical units are manned by middle-level neurosurgical staff with varying levels of experience in scan interpretation. Multimedia Messaging Service mobile phone technology offers a simple, cheap, quick, and effective solution to the problem of scan interpretation. An MMS takes only a few minutes to send and receive and allows senior doctors to view important images and make important clinical decisions to enhance patient management in an emergency situation. A mobile phone (with VGA camera and MMS capabilities) was provided to the neurosurgery registrar on call. The on-call mobile phone is passed on to the corresponding registrar on-call the next day. All consultants had personal mobile phones that are MMS-enabled. Relevant representative CT/MRI images can be taken directly from the mobile phone from the PACS off the computer screen. When only hard copies are available, the images can be taken off the light box. After a 12-month trial period, a questionnaire was given to all staff involved in the project to ascertain the usefulness of the MMS teleradiology service. The survey on the use of the MMS service in a tertiary neurosurgical service demonstrated that the technology significantly improved the level of confidence of the senior-level staff in emergent clinical decision making. Significantly, the MMS images were of sufficient quality and resolution to obviate the need to view the actual scans. The impact of MMS is less pronounced in the middle-level staff, but there was a trend that most of the junior staff found the service more useful. The MMS technology is demonstrated to be a useful media for the transmission of high-quality images to assist in the diagnostic process and implementation of emergent clinical therapy. It is already in widespread use and can be seamlessly and rapidly implemented in the clinical arena to improve the quality of patient care.
Mobile teleradiology: all images everywhere
International Congress Series, 2001
This paper describes the ongoing work on mobile teleradiology systems in the EC-funded project MTM. The current development is based on the CHILI software architecture which provides a PACS and teleradiology infrastructure. The authors collected user requirements in a first step. Appropriate hardware has been selected based on these requirements. Dedicated software versions of CHILI have been realized on selected PDA hardware. The target of the MTM project is to use UMTS for wireless communication. A wireless local area network (WLAN, IEEE 802.11b) is currently used, as UMTS is not yet available. We have implemented the full functionality of a regular workstation in the initial version of the software. A first evaluation found out that such a high level of functionality is both difficult to implement in a useful manner but also not really requested by medical users in an actual situation. Future software versions therefore need to focus more on usability issues and core functionality.
Smartphone imaging repository: a novel method for creating a CT image bank
Trials
Background Imaging repositories are commonly attached to ongoing clinical trials, but capturing, transmitting, and storing images can be complicated and labor-intensive. Typical methods include outdated technologies such as compact discs. Electronic file transfer is becoming more common, but even this requires hours of staff time on dedicated computers in the radiology department. Methods We describe and test an image capture method using smartphone camera video-derived images of brain computed tomography (CT) scans of traumatic intracranial hemorrhage. The deidentified videos are emailed or uploaded from the emergency department for central adjudication. We selected eight scans, mild moderate, and severe subdural and multicompartmental hematomas and mild and moderate intraparenchymal hematomas. Ten users acquired data using seven different smartphones. We measured the time in seconds it took to capture and send the files. The primary outcomes were hematoma volume measured by ABC/2,...
Image Transfer Using Cellular Phones and Wireless Internet Service
Objective : Neuroimaging data are of paramount importance in making correct diagnosis. We herein evaluate the clinical usefulness of image transfer using cellular phones to facilitate neurological diagnosis and decision-making. Methods : Selected images from CT, MRI scans, and plain films obtained from 50 neurosurgical patients were transferred by cellular phones. A cellular phone with a built-in 1,300,000-pixel digital camera was used to capture and send the images. A cellular phone with a 262,000 color thin-film transistor liquid crystal display was used to receive the images. Communication between both cellular phones was operated by the same wireless protocol and the same wireless internet service. We compared the concordance of diagnoses and treatment plans between a house staff who could review full-scale original films and a consultant who could only review transferred images. These finding were later analyzed by a third observer. Results : The mean time of complete transfer ...
Proceedings of the 35th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2002
With the continuous increase of network capacities, video transmissions in medicine are becoming an effective tool for second opinion diagnosis, archiving and teaching environments. This study investigates video compression delay times and transmission impairments for different compression formats and describes the resulting picture qualities. For the evaluation endoscopic video sequences were produced with different compression formats and bandwidth requirements. In a second step an impairment tool was used to introduce error rates to the video material to simulate network behavior. A group of medical experts evaluated the video sequences rating visibility of errors, artifacts, sharpness, overall picture quality and suitability for a medical diagnosis. The results clearly establish lower boundaries for picture quality deteriorated by compression and network impairments, and introduce limits for medical assessments.
Journal of Medical Systems, 2020
Telepathology is in its nascent stages in India. Video calling applications in mobile phones can be efficiently used to transmit static and live field microscopic images hastening low cost telepathology. To evaluate the efficiency of WhatsApp® Video Calling for dynamic microscopy in distant diagnosis. Thirty haematoxylin and eosin stained slides of common pathologies were retrieved from the archives of Department of Oral Pathology and Microbiology, coded with relevant history and given to three untrained investigators. The investigators then connected a mobile phone with VOIP facility to a microscope using a custom adaptor. Dynamic fields were transferred to three independent pathologists via WhatsApp® video call. The pathologists attempted to diagnose the lesion based on the live field video over their display screen (phone). Audio quality was found to be better than that of video. In 70% of the cases, pathologists could render a diagnosis (13% gave a confirmed diagnosis, 57.7% gav...
Radiology and the mobile device: Radiology in motion
Indian Journal of Radiology and Imaging, 2012
The use of mobile devices is revolutionizing the way we communicate, interact, are entertained, and organize our lives. With healthcare in general and radiology in particular becoming increasingly digital, the use of such devices in radiologic practice is inevitable. This article reviews the current status of the use of mobile devices in the clinical practice of radiology, namely in emergency teleradiology. Technical parameters such as luminance and resolution are discussed. The article also discusses the benefits of such mobility vis-à-vis the current limitations of the technologies available.
A New Concept for Medical Imaging Centered on Cellular Phone Technology
PLoS ONE, 2008
According to World Health Organization reports, some three quarters of the world population does not have access to medical imaging. In addition, in developing countries over 50% of medical equipment that is available is not being used because it is too sophisticated or in disrepair or because the health personnel are not trained to use it. The goal of this study is to introduce and demonstrate the feasibility of a new concept in medical imaging that is centered on cellular phone technology and which may provide a solution to medical imaging in underserved areas. The new system replaces the conventional stand-alone medical imaging device with a new medical imaging system made of two independent components connected through cellular phone technology. The independent units are: a) a data acquisition device (DAD) at a remote patient site that is simple, with limited controls and no image display capability and b) an advanced image reconstruction and hardware control multiserver unit at a central site. The cellular phone technology transmits unprocessed raw data from the patient site DAD and receives and displays the processed image from the central site. (This is different from conventional telemedicine where the image reconstruction and control is at the patient site and telecommunication is used to transmit processed images from the patient site). The primary goal of this study is to demonstrate that the cellular phone technology can function in the proposed mode. The feasibility of the concept is demonstrated using a new frequency division multiplexing electrical impedance tomography system, which we have developed for dynamic medical imaging, as the medical imaging modality. The system is used to image through a cellular phone a simulation of breast cancer tumors in a medical imaging diagnostic mode and to image minimally invasive tissue ablation with irreversible electroporation in a medical imaging interventional mode.
2010
OBJECTIVE: To compare the time required for generation and typing of radiology reports by means of an electronic system based on the technology of voice over internet protocol (VoIP) and the traditional system, in which the report is handwritten by the radiologist. MATERIALS AND METHODS: It was necessary to model, build and deploy the proposed electronic system, capable of recording the reports in a digital audio format and comparing it with the traditional method. Radiologists and transcriptionists recorded the reports generation and typing times for both systems, using appropriate forms. RESULTS: When the mean times between both systems were compared, those from the electronic system presented a reduction of 20% (p = 0.0410) in the report generation time as compared with the traditional method. On the other hand, the traditional method was more efficient with respect to typing time, as the mean typing time with the electronic system was three times longer (p < 0.0001). CONCLUSION: The results demonstrated a statistically significant difference between the compared systems, with the electronic system being more efficient than the traditional one with respect to report generation time, while the traditional method presented better results with respect to typing time.