SmartWADO: an Extensible WADO Middleware for Regional Medical Image Sharing

Medical image sharing is an important problem in modern radiology, with wide applications in Internet and mobile devices. Some important features need to be added and optimized to medical image sharing. In this paper, we present an extensible Web Access to DICOM Persistent Objects (WADO) middleware based on image cache and real-time Web monitor technology for regional medical image sharing. We first develop the extension method of WADO standard and workflow of extended WADO service. Then, we design a medical image cache method to improve the performance of medical image on-demand transmission. Using the real-time monitor can discover the performance bottlenecks and optimized critical points. The experimental results show that the middleware effectively delivers medical images and reports to Web clients over the Internet, regardless of the platform used for access. It can be deployed in one hospital to provide WADO service to medical workers and also can be applied to regional picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) to transmit medical images and reports to Internet users in a way that is transparent to end-user applications.