A communication system for the transmission of nuclear medicine images over standard telephone lines.

Abstract

With the development of nuclear medicine the time is approaching when small departments are likely to be established in many hospitals. However, due to financial constraints these small units will not be served by full-time, trained consultants in the specialty nor will they be equipped with full computer facilities for processing image data. A practical solution is that central departments of nuclear medicine should be linked to the peripheral departments, allowing full data processing to take place in the main department together with clinical interpretation. This would be followed by rapid transmission of the report back to the peripheral centre. There is a parallel problem in that there is no agreed standard format to present the results of nuclear medicine imaging. In consequence a clinician serving several centres could be faced with interpreting data in a variety of formats. This variety of format also makes for considerable difficulty in comparing results from different centres. A solution to this...