Towards a more cloud-friendly medical imaging applications architecture: a modest proposal

Area of Science:

• Information Technology
• Radiology
• Cloud Computing

Background:

• The "cloud" is frequently discussed in IT and radiology literature as a solution for cost, performance, and elasticity.
• However, migrating compute and storage to external data centers can introduce new challenges, notably increased latency.
• Latency, or slower turnaround times, arises from image data traversing longer network paths via encrypted tunnels outside the local area network.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the challenges associated with cloud adoption in medical imaging.
• To propose requirements for an imaging system design that mitigates cloud-related latency.
• To enable leveraging cloud strengths without compromising performance.

Main Methods:

• Exploration of information technology literature and radiology trade journals.
• Analysis of the impact of cloud migration on imaging system performance.
• Identification of design requirements to reduce high-latency image transmissions.

Main Results:

• Cloud migration presents latency challenges in medical imaging systems.
• Existing cloud solutions may trade one set of problems for another.
• A need exists for specialized imaging system designs to address these issues.

Conclusions:

• Simply moving to the cloud does not inherently solve imaging system problems.
• Latency is a significant concern that requires specific design considerations.
• Future imaging systems must balance cloud benefits with the need for low latency.