Cemax shows DICOM compliance; features link-up with Bowman Gray

PACS developer Cemax showed progress at the 1994 Radiological Society of North America meeting toward full compliance with the ACR-NEMA DICOM 3.0 standard while at the same time showing off networking capabilities gained through its alliance with AT&T.

The company's new Perfect Vision series of workstations is the first product of its type to use a DICOM print service class, according to the Fremont, CA, developer (SCAN 4/6/94). This subsegment of the DICOM standard is a method of printing images on a laser printer-based network. Earlier versions of components made by Cemax brought the company into compliance with DICOM storage service class.

The key to print service class compliance is the Cemax network film-server. It will plug into any commercial printer to make the device compatible with the DICOM print standard, according to Oran E. Muduroglu, vice president of sales and marketing.

Cemax gains a competitive advantage from this initiative, according to Michael J. Cannavo, president of Image Management Consultants in Winter Park, FL.

"Instead of just taking a DICOM connection out from a modality and allowing that DICOM-compatible signal to be put on a network, the system accepts that DICOM signal from the modality, stores the signal according to DICOM specifications and prints according to DICOM as well," Cannavo said.

To illustrate this new capability, hard copies of electronic images processed through a Cemax ImageServer were generated in the company's booth on printers supplied by Codonics, Hewlett-Packard and Mitsubishi Electronics.

Cemax's RSNA exhibit also highlighted capabilities gained through strategic alliances with AT&T, 3M and GE. To show its relatively new technology sharing and distribution agreement with Cemax, AT&T engineers set up a T-3 line between the booth and the Bowman Gray School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC. The hook-up demonstrated high-resolution telemedicine by transmitting computed radiography and MR images to Chicago while conducting two-way teleconferencing between sites.

"Physicians sitting in our booth performed joint consultations with Bowman Gray, marking up the imaging, adjusting brightness and contrast and changing from one case to the next," Muduroglu said.

Six workstations in the Cemax exhibit were interconnected via asynchronous transfer mode. Five workstations were interconnected via FDDI and Ethernet to show the systems' performance using those media.

Muduroglu noted that 3M has established distributed image management networks for six customers since allying with Cemax in February of last year (SCAN 3/2/94). 3M is using the Cemax technology for the core of its image management, display and distribution products. Several new products developed through this joint relationship will be introduced in the next 12 to 24 months, Muduroglu said.

Cemax's relationship with 3M is similar to its alliance with GE, according to Muduroglu. He announced that GE recently adopted software that runs on Cemax's ClinicalView critical-care review station and the DiagnosticView physician workstation for display of images acquired on GE's CT, MRI and digital radiography systems. GE will use the software on its Advantage Review Clinical and Advantage Review Diagnostic workstations.