A broadband multimedia collaborative system for advancedteleradiology and medical imaging diagnosis

This paper presents a new telemedicine system currently in routine clinical usage, developed within the European Union (EU) ACTS BONAPARTE project. The telemedicine system is developed on an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) multimedia hardware/software platform comprising the following set of telemedicine services: synchronous cooperative work, high-quality video conference, multimedia mail, medical image digitizing, processing, storing and printing, and local and remote transparent database access. The medical information handled by the platform conforms to the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) 3.0 medical imaging standard. The telemedicine system has been installed for clinical routines in three Spanish hospitals since November 1997 and has been used in an average of one/two clinical sessions per week. At each clinical session, a usability and clinical evaluation of the system was carried out. Evaluation is carried out through direct observation of interactions and questionnaire-based subjective data. The usability evaluation methodology and the results of the system usability study are also presented in this article. The experience gained from the design, development, and evaluation of the telemedicine system is providing an indepth knowledge of the benefits and difficulties involved in the installation and clinical usage of this type of high-usability and advanced multimedia telemedicine system in the field of teleradiology and collaborative medical imaging diagnosis     

多媒体通信综述

本文在简述了语音、数据及视频等信息处理技术和传输、组网等网络技术的基础上,着重介绍了多媒体通信业务的应用,主要包括;视频电子信箱,远程医疗诊断、计算机辅助设计,数字网络图书馆,多媒体会议系统,高清晰度图像系统和视频点播等。文章最后还简单介绍了国内外多媒体通信业务发展的情况。     

Telemedicine and ISDN

The advantages of using integrated services digital networks (SDNs) as an infrastructure for telemedicine applications are discussed. The applications, developed in a Norwegian Telecom Research project, are grouped according to their use in the health services: telediagnosis, distance learning, medical information, and administrative health information. The telemedicine applications are reviewed, and a number of ideas for further development of such applications based on ISDN technology are proposed     

Medical imaging applications of emerging broadband networks

The various existing or envisioned applications for so-called telemedicine networks are described. The current and future medical environments are examined with respect to the use of such networks. The characteristics of medical images that affect their transmission and storage are discussed. Medical communication field trials using the emerging broadband networks are described. Some service scenarios and concepts are presented     

A communication server for telemedicine applications

Telemedicine applications, in some cases, need multipoint-to-multipoint communication. To meet the requirement of telemedicine communication, the development of a medical communication server is proposed in this paper. To make a working, as well as cost-effective, communication platform for the telemedicine applications, a specially designed communication server model is proposed in this work. This server is able to provide an effective multipoint-to-multipoint communication service for any level applications in telemedicine. The implementation program of this server is developed in a Windows '95 environment by using a winsocket. The trial application testing in a telemonitoring system is also presented to demonstrate the feasibility of taking such a structure with the server. By using the architecture of such a communication server in telemedicine applications, the multipoint-to-multipoint communication is easily managed and the communication processes are simplified and well controlled by the server     

Security and privacy in RFID and applications in telemedicine

Radio frequency identification systems have many applications in manufacturing, supply chain management, inventory control, and telemedicine. In an RFID system, products and objects are given RFID tags to identify themselves. However, security and privacy issues pose significant challenges on these systems. In this article we first briefly introduce RFID systems. Then two RFID applications in telemedicine are proposed: studying supply and demand of doctors, nurses, and patients in hospitals and healthcare, and developing mobile telemedicine services. The security and privacy issues of RFID, and their solutions are discussed as well.     

A Novel Multimedia Streaming Scheme for N-Screen Services in Wireless USB Networks

Ultra wideband (UWB) technology has emerged as a solution for the wireless interface between medical sensors and a personal server in future telemedicine systems. Wireless universal serial bus (USB) is the USB technology merged with UWB technology. Wireless USB can be applied to wireless personal area network applications as well as personal area network applications like wired USB. In case of n-screen service applications, data traffics must broadcast to the adjacent devices However, the current wireless USB is designed to support the communication through the point-to-point connection between the host and the device only. This policy increases delay and energy consumption of wireless host and devices significantly. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel multimedia streaming scheme for n-screen service in wireless USB networks. The simulation results show that proposed protocol can enhance the throughput and delay performance and improve energy efficiency by minimizing the multimedia data delivery process.     

Architecture Concepts for Multimedia Signal Processing

Architectural concepts are presented aimed at future multimedia processing schemes. Starting from an analysis of current and future multimedia applications, specific computational requirements are derived. It will be shown that multimedia applications benefit from an exhaustive and flexible exploitation of parallelism. Three architectural concepts—reconfigurable computing, simultaneous multithreading, and associative controlling—are presented, and their potential to increase further the performance on future multimedia applications is investigated.     

B-ISDN multimedia workstation architecture

Technical issues involved in integrating computer and communication technologies in the broadband integrated services digital network (B-ISDN) environment are discussed. The Multimedia Environment for Remote Multiple-Attendee Interactive Decision-making (MERMAID), an ISDN-based multimedia and multiparty desktop conference system, is described. MERMAID involves B-ISDN key technologies related to multimedia and multicast protocols, and workstation architecture for groupware applications. Technical issues based on user experiences and evaluations of MERMAID over three years are presented and discussed in connection with the system's evolution in the B-ISDN environment     

Multimedia and multimedia communication: a tutorial

This paper presents, in a tutorial fashion, the important features of multimedia technology. The specific areas addressed are multimedia and compression standards, computer networks, multimedia transport, and some specific applications employed by industry to date. Multimedia and the effective and efficient communication of multimedia using compression and networks are fused together in this tutorial in an attempt to demonstrate the tight coupling which exists between these two interrelated technologies. First, the techniques and properties inherent in both multimedia and compression standards are presented. Then, the important characteristics of the major local and wide area networks are summarized. Next, the communication techniques for the transport of video and video conferencing are discussed. The new strategies employed to connect homes through cable TV and the telephone companies, as well as the new Ethernet technologies, are also described. Finally, some modern applications of multimedia communication derived from the automotive industry are used to describe the use of this technology in design, manufacturing, and sales     

Wireless telemedicine systems: an overview

Rapid advances in information technology and telecommunications and, more specifically, wireless and mobile communications - and their convergence ("telematics") are leading to the emergence of a new type of information infrastructure that has the potential of supporting an array of advanced services for healthcare. The objective of this paper is to provide a snapshot of the applications of wireless telemedicine systems. A review of the spectrum of these applications and the potential benefits of these efforts is presented, followed by successful case studies in electronic patient record, emergency telemedicine, teleradiology, and home monitoring. It is anticipated that the progress carried out in these efforts and the potential benefits of emerging mobile technologies will trigger the development of more applications, thus enabling the offering of a better service to the citizen     

福建省宽带多媒体通信网集成方案

本文主要介绍福建省宽带多媒体通信网络拓扑结构和业务集成方案。宽带多媒体通信网包括ＡＤＳＬ接入网、ＡＴＭ宽带交换网,应用服务器。目前在福建省宽带多媒体通信网上承载的业务有视频点播和宽带ＷＥＢ浏览、１６９／１６３的传输和路由骨干,帧中继,交互式视频业务（如电视会议,远程医疗）等。     

一种确定多媒体应用程序内层循环的子字并行编译方法

多媒体程序是数据密集型应用，其核心代码部分占用了大部分的执行时间，因此，对多媒体应用程序的研究大多针对其核心代码部分．本文围绕多媒体应用程序的核心内层循环，分析其子字并行特点，提出了一种新颖的按位数据流分析方法，能够确定程序的内层循环，为进一步深入研究奠定基础．     

IEEE 802.16/WiMAX-based broadband wireless access and its application for telemedicine/e-health services

In this article we investigate the application of IEEE 802.16-based broadband wireless access (BWA) technology to telemedicine services and the related protocol engineering issues. An overview of the different evolutions of the IEEE 802.16 standard is presented and some open research issues are identified. A survey on radio resource management, traffic scheduling, and admission control mechanisms proposed for IEEE 802.16/WiMAX systems is also provided. A qualitative comparison between third-generation wireless systems and the IEEE 802.16/WiMAX technology is given. A survey on telemedicine services using traditional wireless systems is presented. The advantages of using IEEE 802.16/WiMAX technology over traditional wireless systems, as well as the related design issues and approaches are discussed. To this end, we present a bandwidth allocation and admission control algorithm for IEEE 802.16-based BWA designed specifically for wireless telemedicine/e-health services. This algorithm aims at maximizing the utilization of the radio resources while considering the quality of service requirements for telemedicine traffic. Some performance evaluation results for this scheme are obtained by simulations     

The integration of ad hoc sensor and cellular networks for multi-class data transmission

This paper targets mobile telemedicine applications that can be supported using third generation (3G) cellular networks, to provide highly flexible medical services. On the other hand, large-scale Ad hoc Sensor Networks (ASN), when deployed among mobile patients who may carry different kinds of micro-sensors to measure ECG, blood pressure, basal temperature or other physiological data, can provide a dynamic data query architecture to allow the medical specialists to monitor patients at any place. So far very little research has been conducted to explore the possibility of integrating ASN with mobile telemedicine. In this paper: 1. we suggest an integrated architecture that takes advantage of the low cost mobile sensor networks and 3G cellular networks to support multimedia medical calls with differentiated Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements. 2. We propose a low-energy, distributed, concentric-zone-based data query mechanism that has the advantages of both proactive and reactive ad hoc routing algorithms to collect medical results from large-scale mobile patients for medical specialists who use cellular network to report patient data to the medical center. 3. In order to minimize the ambulance wireless call-dropping rate, we adopt accurate resource reservation call admission control (CAC) scheme to allocate the necessary bandwidth in the destination cell. 4. In order to meet the QoS requirements of patients’ wireless calls, we use dynamic guard channel CAC scheme to keep their handoff-call dropping rate below a certain threshold. We evaluate the validity of our schemes through simulations and analyze their performance. Our results clearly indicate the efficiency of the proposed CAC and sensor network query algorithms to meet the multimedia telemedicine QoS requirements.     

Scalable medical data compression and transmission using wavelet transform for telemedicine applications

In this paper, a novel medical data compression algorithm, termed layered set partitioning in hierarchical trees (LSPIHT) algorithm, is presented for telemedicine applications. In the LSPIHT, the encoded bit streams are divided into a number of layers for transmission and reconstruction. Starting from the base layer, by accumulating bit streams up to different enhancement layers, we can reconstruct medical data with various signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and/or resolutions. Receivers with distinct specifications can then share the same source encoder to reduce the complexity of telecommunication networks for telemedicine applications. Numerical results show that, besides having low network complexity, the LSPIHT attains better rate-distortion performance as compared with other algorithms for encoding medical data.     

An experimental study for transmitting MPEG-2 streams over ATM networks

This paper presents a comparative study of different techniques aiming at transmitting MPEG-2 streams over ATM networks, with emphasis on the presentation of practical results achieved on an experimental platform available at LSI, a laboratory of the University of São Paulo, Brazil. This study has the purpose to determine some tuning parameters for optimizing the implementation of distributed multimedia applications on different network technologies. The focus of this experimental study has been on non-native ATM techniques like “Classical IP over ATM” and “LAN Emulation”, as well as native ATM techniques based on direct access service primitives to AAL5. The influence of different parameters, like packet length, buffer size, CPU speed, on the resulting throughput has been studied. Furthermore, a testing tool is being developed for assessing the transmission of MPEG-2 streams based on the practical experience achieved so far. These results will permit the evaluation of different network technologies and also help in the development of distributed multimedia applications like video-on-demand, videoconferencing and telemedicine.     

基于软交换的多媒体应用方案

文章概要分析了多媒体应用的现状和发展趋势,从体系结构、设备接入、业务能力和运营支持系统策略等主要方面,阐述了基于软交换的宽带城域网多媒体应用总体技术方案,并给出了一个典型的点到多点多媒体会议呼叫流程示例,最后简单讨论了软交换在应用过程中面临的主要技术问题。     

Embedding of Dedicated High-Performance ASICs into Reconfigurable Systems Providing Additional Multimedia Functionality

The computational power required in many multimedia applications is well beyond the capabilities of today's multimedia systems. Therefore, the embedding of additional high-performance accelerator multimedia components into these systems is most decisive. This paper presents the embedding of multimedia components into computer systems using reconfigurable coprocessor boards. The goal of those reconfigurable platforms which can be adapted to several applications and which include programmable digital signal processors, control and memory devices as well as dedicated multimedia ASICs is worked out. On the way to such a platform four ASICs for image and text processing are presented. The embedding of these components into a computing system using a CardBus-based coprocessor board is shown. Such a reconfigurable coprocessor board is an important intermediate stage on the way to future hybrid reconfigurable systems on chip.