The Food and Drug Administration hasn't approved digital mammography systems or telemammography, but academic centers are already exploring teleconsultation on existing mammography workstations.
Stand-alone workstations with high-resolution networked digital monitors are being used for teleconsultation at the Laboratory for Radiology Informatics at the University of California, San Francisco. Using $6000 monitors with 2048 x 2560 display, the laboratory has successfully conducted mammography teleconsultation.
"This has been well received by clinicians," said Dr. Mohammad Jahangri, a fellow at the lab.
Samples of the types of teleconsultations possible with these monitors are on display at infoRAD. Teleconsulting clinicians can view each other's ROI in real-time. The key is allowing the monitors to display both users' mouse cursors.
"Don't have two clinicians fighting over one cursor," Jahangri said.
The teleconsultation project monitors were configured with a Sun UltraSparc II system. In addition to the synchronized cursors, other features include remote drawing of lines, polygons, circles, and text. Users need a separate telephone connection for audio support.
"The system is based on X-Motif library, UDP and TCP protocols with multithreaded functionality," Jahangri said.
Several vendors have taken an interest in the project, which was first shown last year in a limited form, he said. More commercial versions have started to pop up on the RNSA technical exhibit floor.
"That's okay," Jahangri said. "What we're doing is in the public domain."
