iScout: A tool for navigating large image data sets
Before joining UBC, Dr. Rohling was Project Manager and software architect for 3D Tool at McKesson Medical Imaging. McKesson Medical’s main product is PACS – Picture Archiving and Communication Systems. PACS is a combination of a computer network, digital image archiving and workstation display systems for the management of medical images in a hospital. 3D imaging is a visualization tool for radiologists to read and interpret a set of medical images that are given as a stack of cross-sectional images that span a portion of the human body. As medical imaging scanners, such as MRI and CT, continue to improve, the number of the medical images has increased to a point where radiologists can no longer read all images in an efficient manner. Dr. Rohling developed 3D Tool for McKesson that provides ways of visualization these stacks of data in an efficient and clinically relevant way. 3D Tool was incorporated into the McKesson PACS product in 2000 and is in daily use in hundreds of hospitals around the world.
We have continued research at UBC on the problem of workload for radiologists in a PACS system. We have developed the iScout tool for rapid navigation through a stack of images without requiring all of the images to be transferred from the archive to the radiologist’s workstation. We also worked on the optimization of the design of radiology workstations to improve workflow by analysing eye-gaze patterns. We continue to be involved with PACS research and Dr. Rohling is a member of DICOM – Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine. DICOM is the organization that provides industry-wide standards for the representation of digital medical images (analogous to the JPEG standard for regular images). Dr. Rohling is a member of working group 17 on multi-dimensional imaging, and co-writer of the standard for registration of medical images (Supplement 73). In 2004-5, Dr. Rohling was chairman pro-tem of this working group. His work on DICOM has improved the state-of-the-art of the display of medical images on PACS systems around the world. Dr. Rohling’s participation has also helped to bridge research at UBC and PACS companies, such as McKesson. McKesson continues to support our research through research grants, including a grant with the BC Advanced Systems Institute.