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Ricerca>Progetti>Medimedia
| Full title | Medical Images Integration
for Multimedia European Databases Interconnection and Common Access |
Summary
| Medical imaging
has become a major field of interest in healthcare over the last decade. Indeed,
most of the diagnostic procedures used in daily practice produce images of different
types and from different sources: medical imaging will become more and more multimodal.
On the other hand, a number of driving forces are pushing the medical community
towards a better integration of all the data related to one patient in a centralised
folder and the development of adequate applications supporting an electronic integrated
patient record is a key step for the future development of informatics for healthcare.
Thus, the possibility of integrating images from different sources in this patient
record is a mandatory step which requires a certain level of integration and/or
interoperability between systems producing these images as well as standardisation
of images formats and terminology. Within the 4th Framework Programme, Health
Telematics Sector, several projects have been funded which deal with medical images
and they will result in the implementation of large databases of medical images:
X-ray, endoscopy, pathology, CT scanner.
"Umbrella projects"
are defined as large R&D projects that try to cluster the activity of various
existing projects funded by the 4th Framework Programme in order to bring adapted
solutions to questions of common interest. This was thus a unique opportunity
to develop informatics solutions integrating existing databases of medical images
into a common search engine and providing innovative user interfaces. The MediMedia
project is built upon the co-operation of seven projects (CARDIASSIST, EURORAD,
GASTER, IAEVA-II, IGOS, MEDFRAME, TARGET) who have decided to produce a common
search engine, interfacing to each of the existing databases and a new user interface
based on 3-dimension technologies in order to allow the end user (the clinical
practitioner) to access the information contained anywhere in the databases through
a "one stop shopping" query process. The project will also propose solutions
that, in a further step, will be useful for integration of multimodal medical
images into the patient folder. By associating an important scientific publisher
to the project, the output of it will also be exploited for education and documentation
purposes, through both on- and off-line access. This integration programme will
be based on existing standards which will be reviewed extensively during the implementation
phase. Thereby, the project will demonstrate the possibility of interoperability
of databases of medical images and will propose and validate standards for image
management and terminology. Reports on the implementation of these standards will
be forwarded to international organisations in charge of them and reinforce the
presence of European partners in these regulatory bodies. | | Time
frame | 1998-2000 | | Funded
by | European Commission DG XIII | | Project
leader for Campus Bio-Medico | Bruno
Beomonte Zobel | | Main partners | Olympus
Software Europe (DE), AET (IT), CITEC (IT), GMD (DE), LUISS "Guido Carli"
(IT), PRACTIM (FR), Springer-Verlag GmbH & Co. (DE) | | Campus
Bio-Medico role | MEDFRAME project user, IAEVA project technical support. | | Reference
web site | www.medimedia.org | | Notes | |
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