Computer integration of automatic standardised electrocardiogram, chest pain and risk estimation with cardiological images

Despite recent developments in techniques that use more and more images of cardiac patients, there is no universally accepted standard for manipulation of the images. Linking Clinical Data-bases with an image bank is still a difficult task, in practice. We believe that information should be organised following the cardiologist´s needs during his/her daily practice. We have developed a software system which links chest pain information, 12 leads EKG abnormalities (following European SCP protocol, HES program), and standardised estimation of coronary risk. We have demonstrated that this program helps to diagnose healthy people with thoracic pain correctly and quickly and to make a correct prognostic stratification of patients with coronary artery disease. We have designed a more generic tool based on this system to integrate and display images. The final system is also going to integrate non-standard formal images, with standard ECG procedures and well consolidated clinical triage. This will allow a better use of images related to an individual patient and to the specific event while following a classic reasoning mechanism