Turbo charge your PACS

How a smart thin client viewing solution can make life with your existing PACS much easier, and help you migrate smoothly towards a future thin slice PACS.

“The Visage software has proven to be much more efficient than other solutions, especially for interpretation of CT angiography exams. Using the 3D thin client technology anywhere on the campus, reporting as well as communication with the referring physicians in other departments has greatly improved”
-Dr. Bernhard Meyer, Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin

Do you know this feeling - you've got some of the best diagnostic imaging equipment in your facility, but somehow your IT system cannot keep up with it? That your scanner can produce images with sub-millimeter resolution, but the best your PACS can manage is 5 mm slices? That you would love to switch from an axial to a sagittal plane or to quickly have a look in 3D or in a curved reformation, but the time to wait for the processing or to walk over to the specialized workstation does not justify the effort?   

Sounds familiar? Visage offers a smart alternative to solve your dilemma, save your investments, and build upon your existing archive, workflow, and interfaces. This alternative may even turn out to provide a really smooth migration path towards your next generation PACS.

A Layer to Make You Happy

The idea is to simply add a thin layer on top of your RIS/PACS which makes reading large CTs and MRs more efficient, adds advanced clinical applications, provides an alternative viewer in cases where your primary reading solution is down or performs poorly, and even provides remote access for radiologists as well as referrers.

You think that this sounds too good to be true? You think that adding one more component will introduce yet another user interface and yet another level of workflow complexity to be managed? Not if you select a smart thin client PACS viewer such as Visage® 7 from Visage Imaging.

Small Footprint but Huge Benefits

With a thin client / server solution like Visage® 7 you only need to integrate and maintain a single server system; all your existing client hardware can be reused. The impact on the network traffic is minimal because of the low bandwidth requirements of the streaming protocol employed. The thin client is a tiny software application that can be downloaded and installed without side effects on all existing viewing stations, 3D workstations, office PCs, and even laptops and tablets. Visage supports Windows as well as Mac OS X, so that Mac users can finally be integrated seamlessly into the radiology and image distribution workflow.

Thin Slice Access and Improved Reading Performance

With Visage 7, loading and multi-planar reconstruction of large data volumes is much faster than using conventional "fat client" PACS systems. All the 3D processing and "heavy lifting" is done on the server side; the original data does not need to be copied onto your client computer; and thus loading and processing performance is always guaranteed, independent of your client hardware.

The new server can act as your thin slice cache, and thus provide unlimited access to all originally acquired data. You can deploy display protocols that first present thick slice images, and then allow instant switching between thin and thick slices with a single click. You can even control this by user group or individual user - so both the "thick slice first" and "thin slice only" parties can work the way they like best.

Adding Advanced Applications and Workflow Options

Visage® 7 offers a comprehensive set of advanced applications that are natively integrated into the thin client viewer. CT and MR angiography, cardiac CT, perfusion analysis and oncologic follow-up can become an integral part of your primary interpretation workflow, and do not need to be performed on separate workstations. This feature can turn into a significant economic advantage, since you may find your need for expensive dedicated workstations drastically reduced.

Furthermore, Visage offers interesting options to improve workflow for post processing, review, and second opinions. After performing measurements and 3D analysis, a user can simply save the current "working session" and share it with other users. Those can recall the session on their own PCs, review it, and even decide to add their own manipulations. This greatly facilitates collaboration and reduces overhead.

Safety Net and Remote Access

In order to fit seamlessly into your workflow, the Visage viewer can be configured entirely by means of display protocols and individual settings. You can mimic your existing protocols and control which toolsets are available to which users, so that the learning curve for the additional software component becomes minimal. In contrast to other thin client offerings, Visage 7 is designed for primary interpretation across all modalities, including plain film and mammography, angiography, CT and MR, PET-CT, and SPECT-CT.

This way you can create a complete "safety net" for your PACS - an independent viewer that can still function even if your primary PACS is temporarily down. In addition, all functions can be accessed remotely via Internet, so that doctors on call or external consultants can instantly view and process any image from anywhere.

Image Distribution

Last, but not least, the same thin client server can act as your image distribution solution. Internal and external referrers can access the images from their local PCs and Macs, even over conventional DSL lines, without waiting for the data to be pushed or pulled across. You can control the level of functionality you want to give to your referrers - from simple 2D access for basic users to 3D manipulations for clinicians demanding more than just pre-canned reconstructions.

Let the Turbo Kick In

The time is now to turbo-charge your PACS. Adding Visage 7 is as easy as adding a new workstation - but the economic, performance, workflow, and reliability improvemets benefit all users across your enterprise.

Author and Contact:

Dr. Hartmut Schirmacher
Director Product Management
Visage Imaging GmbH
Lepsiusstr. 70
12163 Berlin, Germany
+49 30 700968-0
info@visageimaging.com
www.visageimaging.com