Florian Falter and Nicholas J. Screaton (eds.)Imaging the ICU Patient201410.1007/978-0-85729-781-5_8

8. Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS)

Yu Xuan Kitzing¹

(1)

Department of Radiology, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Missenden Road, Camperdown, Sydney, NSW, 2050, Australia

Yu Xuan Kitzing

Abstract

Effective implementation of the radiology service in a hospital includes: processing of examination requests, storage of clinical images, distribution of the radiology reports and communication of urgent clinical findings. Utilisation of information technology in the radiology department has improved the efficiency and accuracy of these processes. Electronic requesting (Ordercomms), Radiology Information System (RIS) and the Picture Archival & Communication System (PACS) are the integrating systems that allow the sharing of clinical information and images between clinicians and radiologists whilst maintaining data integrity and security.

Introduction

With advancement in computer technology, medical images can be stored, transferred and accessed through the Picture Archival and Communication System (PACS). In most hospitals, it has replaced the conventional film filing rooms and light-box film reading. A typical PACS has four components: The modalities for image acquisition, a dedicated network for data transfer, workstations for image reporting and reviewing and an archive allowing storage and near real time image retrieval. Image data acquired through various modalities are sent via high-speed network connection to a storage server, which in turn connects to the archival storage media, the clinical and reporting workstations and the server for remote access. The network is interfaced with HIS (Hospital Information System) via RIS (Radiology Information System) to ensure the integration of the imaging system with the hospital database.

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