Today at the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual conference in Chicago, Intel, SGI and FUJIFILM Medical Systems USA announced a new picture archiving and communication system (PACS) solution that will revolutionize the world of radiology and change the way all healthcare professionals view and analyze complex datasets. The fruit of a partnership announced at last year's RSNA, the new Volume Exploration solution will deliver the benefits of the open architecture Prism visualization system to the diagnostic interpretation process through Fuji's Synapse PACS. While the first digital, filmless hospital was created just seven years ago, PACS is now an accepted technology, offering radiologists and other clinicians the ability to retrieve, share, and remotely access complex, two-dimensional (2D) scan data. The amount of information that must be processed, however, has grown exponentially, taxing the ability of standard desktop workstations to process and display the data in a timely fashion. Radiologists today are experiencing "slice overload;" it is simply not possible to efficiently view thousands of single images in a reasonable amount of time. As a result, more clinicians are now looking toward volume reconstructions, rather than a multitude of static scans, as an efficient and optimal use of the entire scanned data set. With volume exploration capabilities, researchers can examine scans much more accurately and faster, discovering anomalies that would simply not be apparent through a multitude of two-dimensional views. "We're undergoing a revolution in CT scanning as a digital input modality," said Robert Cooke, Fuji's executive director of marketing, network systems. "Volume exploration will make much more accurate diagnoses possible, creating great benefits for science and ultimately the patient." Fuji and SGI are creating a system that eliminates the digital bottlenecks of ever expanding data, making rapid, economical volume exploration a reality. To accomplish this, data no longer will be rendered on a radiologist or doctor's desktop but rather at a centralized 3D graphics server. Using SGI's shared-memory and single system image architecture integrated with multiple ATI FireGL graphics processor units (GPUs), data processing tasks can be divided between GPUs to minimize rendering time and maximize image quality. "We are proud of the impact that ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators are having today in powering the next generation of medical imaging solutions," said Dinesh Sharma, director of Workstation products, ATI Technologies. "Together with Fuji and SGI, ATI is pleased to be playing a key role in bringing to the medical community new capabilities that will dramatically improve the diagnostic process for medical professionals and their patients." The Silicon Graphics Prism visualization system brings the following benefits to the new Fuji volume exploration PACS solution: -- Short response time. Radiologists and clinicians can start interacting with the data within seconds because rendering is local to where these large data sets are stored. SGI Visual Area Networking (VAN) technology sends just the reconstructed voxels to the radiologist's desktop while data still resides on the server. -- Scalability in data handling capability. Large data sets can be loaded in main memory due to the 64-bit architecture. System resources such as CPUs, I/O, memory, storage, and graphics, can be independently expanded as the hospital's needs grow. -- Using dynamic load balancing, the radiologist is not limited to the texture capacity of a GPU and can utilize the scalability of the Silicon Graphics Prism architecture to load more studies for the best diagnosis. Dynamic load balancing does not limit radiological studies to the capacity of modern day GPUs. -- Scalability in number of users. Multiple users can share the same system due to scalable architecture. -- Scalability in rendering quality. Modern GPUs coupled with calability allow high-quality rendering algorithms to be deployed. This way a volume can be interactively rendered by a user and "tumbled" without the resolution sacrifice all other 3D systems make. This is a key enabling technology so that diagnoses can be made with volumes when there is no a priori knowledge of where the radiologist needs to look for potential disease processes. -- Maintains existing workflow. Unlike proprietary systems from other providers, the Fujifilm and SGI solution brings no changes to the standard diagnostic Synapse workflow. Scans are accessed through the standard Internet Explorer web browser interface, and data is transferred through the IP network. Physicians use their existing monitors and drives; no equipment upgrade or system re-education is necessary. And because the Silicon Graphics Prism system will reside alongside Synapse, the two will integrate seamlessly. Researchers can easily access volume data using the same workflow techniques with which they are already familiar. SGI Visual Area Networking The Silicon Graphics Prism system brings Visual Area Networking (VAN) technology to diagnostic scan analysis, making it possible to rapidly render and transmit volume exploration data to virtually any desktop workstation without sending the data across the network. VAN through SGI OpenGL Vizserver software enables the transfer of rich data between the Silicon Graphics Prism and a thin client. To keep the files small, VAN technology transmits only the pixels of the rendered graphic, rather than the raw data itself. As a result, VAN technology can operate on virtually any type of client, including laptops, workstations and, eventually, even PDAs. With the Fuji and SGI PACS solution, components will be sourced from a number of manufacturers offering best-of-breed technologies. The Silicon Graphics Prism system runs the rock-solid Linux OS based on Intel Itanium 2 processors and ATI FireGL GPUs. "The combination of Silicon Graphics Prism visualization system and Fuji's Synapse PACS solution provides hospitals with a very cost-effective, powerful and flexible centralized system. As technology grows customers will be able to leverage the latest innovations in compute and visualization without changing the entire PACS infrastructure," said Afshad Mistri, senior manager of Advanced Visualization, SGI. As one of the Fuji Photo Film family of companies with 70 years of imaging experience and nearly $25 billion in sales, FUJIFILM Medical Systems is a leading provider of diagnostic imaging products and network systems to meet the needs of healthcare facilities today and well into the future. Fuji's Synapse PACS (picture archiving and communications system) provides a seamless solution for managing, storing and distributing images and information throughout the entire healthcare enterprise. Its Web integrated design and hardware independence provide a technological infrastructure and deployment model that can be expanded upon in a myriad of ways to adapt to evolving technologies. Fuji is headquartered in Stamford, CT. More information is available at its Web site. With offices worldwide, SGI is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., and can be found on the Web at its Web site.