Medical Imaging in Chronological Order

The chronological events of the product creation of the medical imaging workstation are discussed. The growth in functionality and size from prototype to product is shown. Typical problems in this period are explained. Distribution This article or presentation is written as part of the Gaudí project. The Gaudí project philosophy is to improve by obtaining frequent feedback. Frequent feedback is pursued by an open creation process. This document is published as intermediate or nearly mature version to get feedback. Further distribution is allowed as long as the document remains complete and unchanged. All Gaudí documents are available at: http://www.gaudisite.nl/ version: 1.2 status: finished May 22, 2010 1 Project Context Philips Medical Systems is a very old company, dating back to 1896 when the first X-ray tubes were manufactured. Many imaging modalities have been added to the portfolio later, such as Ultra Sound, Nuclear Medicaid, Computed Tomography and Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Since the late seventies the management was concerned by the growing effort to develop the viewing functionality of these systems. Many attempts have been made to create a shared implementation of the viewing functionality, with failures and partial successes. In 1987 a new attempt was started by composing a team, that had the charter to create a Common Viewing platform to be used in all the modalities. This team had the vision that a well designed set of SW components running on standard workstation hardware would be the solution. In the beginning of 1991 many components had been built. For demonstration purposes a Basic Application was developed. The Basic Application makes all lower level functionality available via a rather technology-oriented graphical user interface. The case description starts at this moment, when the Basic Application is shown to stakeholders within Philips Medical Systems. 2 Introduction The context of the first release of Medical Imaging is shown in Section 1. The chronological development of the first release of the medical imaging workstation is described in Section 3. Sections 4 and 5 zoom in on two specific problems encountered during this period. 3 Development of Easyvision RF The new marketing manager of the Common Viewing group was impressed by the functionality and performance of the Basic Application. He thought that a stand alone product derived from the Basic Application would create a business opportunity. The derived product was called Easyvision, the first release of the product was called Easyvision R/F. This first release would serve the URF X-ray market. The Common Viewing management team decided to create Easyvision RF in the beginning of 1991. The enthusiasm of the marketing people for the Basic Application was based on the wealth of functionality that was shown. It provided all necessary viewing functions and even more. Figure 1 shows the chronology, and the initial marketing opinion. Marketing also remarked: ”Normally we have to beg for more functionality, but now we have the luxury to throw out functionality”. The addition of Gerrit Muller Medical Imaging in Chronological Order May 22, 2010 version: 1.2 Embedded Systems Institute page: 1 basic application toolboxes 100 kloc interactive viewing marketing opinion: "All the functionality is available, we only have to provide a clinical UI" Easyvision RF integrated product 360 kloc print server + communication + interactive viewing 1991 1993 1992 performance problems