Multimedia medical signal management — new challenges in crossing the imaging chasm between signal acquisition, processing, diagnosis and treatment

With large amount of patient vital signs, medical image data and diagnosis, as well as treatment results accumulated daily from healthcare enterprises, managing and distributing multimedia information becomes challenging. This presentation selects five independent concepts and technologies and their intertwined relationship to exemplify goal-oriented multimedia signal processing and distribution for healthcare delivery applications. They are: medical imaging informatics; Data Grid for image fault tolerant backup and disaster recovery; computer-assisted detection and diagnosis for daily clinical practice; biometrics technology for data access security in an enterprise level integrated system; and in vivo image-guided real-time surgical treatment. The success of implementing these novel technologies and concepts would have tremendous impact to better present and future healthcare delivery.