A design for a picture archiving communication system central storage facility

A Picture Archive and Communication System (PACS) as it is to be used in a Hospital will consist of a number of workstations, data acquisition stations and output stations, connected to a central storage facility. In this paper the architecture of the central storage facility is studied, and an implementation is proposed. Simulation studies have been performed on the proposed implementations, showing their feasibility. The simulation studies show that the central storage facility can store over 500 sets on a daily basis, while simultaneously handling the review and output activity associated with such a production. On the average, each set is assumed to consist of 3 images of 4 Mbyte each. Simulation results are presented for a number of alternative systems. Special attention is given to the implications of prefetching on the protocols to be used in the PACS system. It is shown that prefetching, in particular in combination with a pipelined system, can yield significant performance benefits. We believe that prefetching of images is a prerequisite for good system performance. The implementation assumes that a high-speed communication protocol is used to interconnect the PACS components. The paper will not go into details on the network considerations. The central storage facility is designed using a general purpose System/370 machine, with the peripherals commonly used for such machines. This implies that it can be realized with currently available equipment. Several alternative implementations using interconnected workstation based systems are suggested.