International Internet-2 performance and automatic tuning protocol for medical imaging applications.

Internet-2 is an advanced computer network, which has been widely used for medical imaging applications such as teleradiology and teleconsultation, since Internet-2 can fulfill the requirements for high-speed data transmission and short turn-around time with low operation cost once installed. However, such high performance of Internet-2 may not be retained for global access from international network peers. Considering the international Internet-2 connection between the PolyU and the IPI/USC, there exist two major factors, network looping in the US and bottleneck of the connection, raising the round-trip time and limiting the available bandwidth, respectively. The available bandwidth will be further underutilized if the TCP/IP parameters at the sending and receiving computers are not appropriately chosen. This paper proposes a repeatable and consistent protocol to automatically tune these parameters for the clinical applications.

Informatics in radiology (infoRAD): A complete continuous-availability PACS archive server.

The operational reliability of the picture archiving and communication system (PACS) server in a filmless hospital environment is always a major concern because server failure could cripple the entire PACS operation. A simple, low-cost, continuous-availability (CA) PACS archive server was designed and developed. The server makes use of a triple modular redundancy (TMR) system with a simple majority voting logic that automatically identifies a faulty module and removes it from service. The remaining two modules continue normal operation with no adverse effects on data flow or system performance. In addition, the server is integrated with two external mass storage devices for short- and long-term storage. Evaluation and testing of the server were conducted with laboratory experiments in which hardware failures were simulated to observe recovery time and the resumption of normal data flow. The server provides maximum uptime (99.999%) for end users while ensuring the transactional integrity of all clinical PACS data. Hardware failure has only minimal impact on performance, with no interruption of clinical data flow or loss of data. As hospital PACS become more widespread, the need for CA PACS solutions will increase. A TMR CA PACS archive server can reliably help achieve CA in this setting.