Multimedia, Visual Computing and the Information Superhighway

multimedia, video, graphics, compression, World Wide Web, medical imaging Multimedia is becoming a mandatory component of most computer interfaces and applications. Medical imaging in particular will be able to exploit these capabilities in concert with data servers that will exist as part of the information superhighway. The ability to connect experts with patients electronically enables care delivery from remote diagnostics to remote surgery. Traditional visual computing tasks such as graphics, volume rendering, computer vision or image processing may also be available to more clinics and researchers as they become "electronically local". Video is the component of multimedia that provides the greatest sense of presence or visual realism yet has been the most difficult to offer digitally due to its high transmission, storage and computation requirements. This paper will address some of the recent innovations in media processing and client/server technology that will facilitate PCs, workstations or even set-topfrV boxes to process and communicate both video and graphics in real-time.