Remote consultation with a multiple-screen FilmPlane radiology workstation
David Volk Beard, Bradley M. Hemminger, P. Brown, R. N. Perry, Bob G. Thompson · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1992
As hospitals geographically spread and radiologic services are required in remote locations, the radiologist increasingly must conduct a remote practice. Rapid image transmission from the remote site to the radiologist is important but only half the problem. First, the radiologist may need to view and discuss the images with the technologist to verify image quality or to specify the location of follow-up images. Second, the radiologist may need to discuss the case with another radiologist for a second opinion or for the advice of a sub-specialist. Third, and most importantly, the radiologist may need to discuss the case with the referring physician to better understand the text data, clinical history, and referring physician's clinical questions and concerns, and to better convey the location and extent of the clinical findings. In this paper we detail the requirements for a remote consultation workstation, present previous work on remote computer interaction, and describe the FilmPlane remote consultation workstation in detail. We then discuss the MICA medical communications project in which FilmPlane will be used for a remote consultation study between the UNC family medicine clinic and the main hospital 1/2 mile away.