The concept of archiving unedited and edited digital coronary angiograms

Digital image data acquired during cardiac catheterization will soon be archived on standardized digital storage media. However, with the enormous amount of generated data, considerable time will be wasted at later reviewing or at conferences, or when performing additional quantitative studies. As a result major advantages of a digital acquisition and archiving technique will be lost. The concept of two way archiving includes an unedited (primary) digital archive as well as a (secondary) archive edited by operator guided "intelligent" data reduction (IDR). IDR is based upon the elimination of useless and redundant frame sequences (FS), documentation of coronary interventions on one representative single frame (F) and on the reduction of relevant FS and physiological data to and ECG-controlled representative cardiac cycle (CC). With a heart rate of 72/min and an acquisition rate of 12.5 F/s a documentation of each FS may be obtained with only 10 F. A redundancy-free set of 130 F of a diagnostic study as well as only 41-85 F of an interventional study will be archived on an individual 3.5" MOD or on a CD-R. Two cardiologists and two cardiosurgeons studied independently 24 IDR-edited and the corresponding unedited digital angiograms and found no significant differences in the diagnostically relevant coronary morphology and left ventricular function. IDR provides an edited digital coronary angiogram, e.g. a set of images free of redundance and without loss of relevant information. Uneditable FS can be archived in their unedited (primary) form. IDR is managed on-line by an operator interacting with the angiographer.