PC - based Workstation for Global PACS Remote Consultation and Diagnosis in Rural Clinics

Most rural clinics across the country have limited facilities to provide state-of-the-art medical services. The availability of enabling technologies, such as telecommunication networks, multimedia workstations, and telemedicine systems which provide medical services to patients without requiring them to travel from their cities represents a great step in patient care. In previous work, we have developed a distributed software for remote consultation and diagnosis (RCD) in a Global PACS environment over the Internet. The RCD system has been designed and tested on DEC and SUN workstations. In this paper, we present a Unix-PC based platform to implement the RCD over a standard telephone line and Serial Line Internet Protocol (SLIP). The Unix-PC platform o ers an inexpensive option for telemedicine workstations in rural clinics, where no Internet is available. If an Internet connection is available at the rural clinic, full RCD multimedia services are possible. The Unix-PC platform has been developed by using Linux, a Unix-like operating system available from several public sites over the Internet. We call the system PC-PACS. The PC-PACS workstation has been tested from di erent rural sites by connecting the Unix-PC system to the Internet through SLIP. Once the system is connected, RCD sessions have been performed between the Unix-PC platform and SUN workstations. The tests have included diagnosis on radiology and pathology images. A separate telephone line for voice communications during the RCD session is required. This paper describes performance tests for the PC-based workstation and the RCD system over SLIP and Ethernet interfaces. Results show acceptable performance of the workstation and the RCD software.