A workstation acquisition node for multi-center imaging studies

This site has a contract as a central data collection and image analysis center for a multiyear study involving four acquisition sites. Magnetic Resonance and Ultrasound studies are to be acquired at the sites and then transmitted via the Internet to the data collection center. This paper will describe the software architecture of a workstation designed to act as a store and forward node at a remote site. The software receives and stores images in DICOM format on the local hard drive. The workstation provides several different mechanisms for removing local identifying patient information and inserting patient and study identifiers which are specific to the multicenter study. After removing or modifying header information, the user may enqueue the data for transmission to the central repository. Commercial hardware and software are used to support a virtual private network (VPN) over the Internet. A Nortel firewall computer at the central site and client software on the workstation implement the VPN which provides a secure transmission using data encryption.