Introduction to Paper by R. G. Jost, M.D., et al, ?PACS Experience as a Motivation for a Campus-wide Picture Network?

Abstract

IT IS INTERESTING and somewhat nostalgic for me to re-read this paper, written over 15 years ago, which captured our view of the future of picture archiving and communications systems (PACS). Many of our assumptions were pretty much on target. The campus-wide picture network described here assumed what was then a rather heretical notion that centralized computing would give way to distributed systems, that computer terminals would routinely be replaced by workstations, and that picture transmission would become commonplace in the educational and business worlds. Those assumptions turned out to be right. In some areas we were not quite so prescient. Recognizing the limitations of Ethernet, we felt that broadband cable television (CATV) systems might provide a suitable alternative in the near term for medical image transmission. It was to be many years, however, before the routine transmission of digital images was to be realized using CATV networks. The scale of the problem was perceived to be different then. Note that the average number of images per magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study in 1985 was 24, with just over 2,000 MRI exams performed per year. Also, at that time a 1024 × 1024 image display system was an expensive commodity and efforts were made to “time share” the system among several users. Many of us assumed that PACS developments would initially progress far more rapidly than they did, but I’m not sure that any of us envisioned the remarkable pace of technological progress that has led to the ubiquity of digital image transmission in our society. Certainly all of us working in this field in the 1980s believed that PACS would one day dramatically change the way that radiology is practiced. In that, we were 100% correct.