Enterprise Management System Features Enhanced Support for Interoperability and Quantitative Imaging

One key feature of the newest version of an enterprise management system is a lobular decomposition tool, which is an analysis and segmentation application that is designed with an emphasis on anatomic structures.

For any structure or organ region that is intertwined with a tree-like structure (such as an arterial and/or venous tree), the lobular decomposition tool allows the user to select the volume of interest, as well as the trees related to it, and to partition the volume into lobes or territories that are most proximal to the tree or to any specific sub-branch. This generic and flexible tool has potential research applications in analysis of the heart, liver, lung, and various other organs and pathologic structures.

TeraRecon (Foster City, CA, USA), one of the largest providers of advanced visualization solutions for medical imaging, announced the release of version 4.4.7 of its flagship iNtuition enterprise image management solution, with enhanced support for interoperability and quantitative imaging, at the 23rd European Congress of Radiology (ECR) meeting, held at the Austria Center, Vienna, Austria, March 2-5, 2012.

“We are pleased to announce the latest release of iNtuition, which makes available exciting innovations first demonstrated at the 2011 annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America [RSNA] in December,” said Robert Taylor, Ph.D., TeraRecon president and chief executive officer. “With thousands of servers deployed globally, iNtuition is a proven, robust, and mature platform, with the broadest clinical functionality available on a true thin-client /server platform. This unique infrastructure affords TeraRecon the singular opportunity to focus research and development on new technology advances to support clinical practice, imaging research and imaging informatics, as evidenced by the new features in this latest iNtuition release. We look forward to maintaining this pace of innovation throughout 2012 and beyond.”

The volumetric histogram supports analysis of a given volume of interest based on partition of the constituent voxels into populations of different intensity or density ranges. This can be utilized, for example, to support research into disease processes such as cancer (where it is desirable to analyze the composition of tumors, in an attempt to understand the balance between active tumor, necrotic tissue, and edema), or emphysema (where the population of low-attenuation voxels in a lung computed tomography [CT] scan may be a meaningful indicator of early disease).

Measurements and other quantitative results obtained with iNtuition can be reported, tracked, stored, and later mined. To facilitate integration of these results into the informatics workflow, iNtuition offers a structured measurement protocol feature, to support the export of quantitative metadata into other systems, such as has been demonstrated with voice recognition and reporting solutions from M*Modal (Franklin, TN, USA) and Nuance (Burlington, MA, USA).

A major feature of the iNtuition solution is the integrated distribution capability provided by iNtuitionEMV (Enterprise Medical Viewer), which is a zero-footprint, multimodality, browser-based viewer designed to integrate with other healthcare informatics systems such as electronic medical records (EMRs), vendor-neutral archives (VNAs), hospital information systems (HIS), radilogic information systems (RIS), picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), and mobile platforms.

TeraRecon is the first and only provider of true thin-client advanced visualization in the Cloud, via the highly popular iNtuitionCloudservice. Free evaluation accounts are available online (please see Related Links below). Since the initial launch of iNtuitionCloud in 2010, over 3,300 accounts have been established and fast growth in usage continues monthly, as the company’s global network of data centers is expanded and enhanced. The iNtuition Uploader allows secure, compressed upload of Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) image data, and then the full iNtuition Client can be run via a web browser to manipulate data uploaded to the cloud.

Prof. Dominik Fleischmann is a chief of cardiovascular imaging and a department of radiology director of CT at Stanford University School of Medicien (Stanford, CA, USA), where he moved after several years in diagnostic and interventional radiology at the University of Vienna, Austria. Commenting on his experience with iNtuition and iNtuitionCloud, Prof. Fleischmann said, “We are using the thin-client and server for several reasons: First and foremost, it provides the performance needed to visualize and review complex cardiovascular anatomy, pathology, and function in 2D [two-dimensions], 3D, and 4D, in a truly interactive fashion. This is enabled by a very well thought-through ‘buttonology,’ which allows the user to focus the interaction on the relevant findings-- without the need to take the eyes off the important findings to, for example, zoom, or pan or change volume-rendering parameters. Second, the thin client architecture makes this powerful tool available virtually everywhere within the radiology department but also for other departments such as cardiothoracic and vascular surgery, cardiology echo-lab, and many others. While I have been very skeptical that a cloud based system using just a wireless connection and a laptop would allow the same smooth performance needed to review complex 4D datasets in a truly interactive fashion, I have been convinced that this is in fact possible. The performance is excellent.”

The success of the public iNtuitionCloud has proven the power and capability of TeraRecon’s cloud technology, which is completely self-contained and not reliant on any third-party service for cloud hosting services. As a result, an equally capable private iNtuitionCloud is possible, with all security and access controls remaining within the healthcare enterprise. Accordingly, deployment of private iNtuitionCloud solutions is accelerating.

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