A Telecardiology Application for PC Platforms
 

Description

CarePC is a Windows’95-based cardiology application (radiology and other versions are being studied for future development) that allows cooperation between physicians through a telematic connection (e.g., a simple TCP/IP connection to the Internet).

CarePC is composed by two modules: the Main Window, which contains the burocratical information about the patient and the physician and is the main control pad for the application, and the Sequence Editor, a Virtual VCR player for cardiology heart beat image sequences and annotations.

 
Functionality

The application was designed in order to avoid the waste of time that takes place when two physicians want to perform a cooperative consultation for a patient.

Until now, the first physician had to examinate the sequence of images, make comments (on written reports) and then send the sequence (on a video or cinema tape) to the other physician, which in turn examines the information and tells the first physician his/her opinions.
 

With this application, we have tried to make use of telematics in the process and make it easier, cheaper and over all, faster. We have designed a multimedia application that allows the examination, transmission and annotation (either text, drawings or voice comments) of the digitized images of the sequences. It also allows a voice connection over the same TCP/IP link (Internet telephony) if the connection is fast enough (in this way the physicians do not need a phone but are able to use their sound cards and microphones).

 The Sequence Editor functionality includes:

• Virtual VCR functions: the same you cab find on an analog VCR, Play, Stop, Pause, reverse Play.
• Access to single images: frame-by-frame, direct access through a sliding bar, direct access through the index number of the frame, a "shuttle" with speed and selection of direction.
• Sequence edition: subsequence selection system, a Delete button, and an Undo button.
• Zoom (from 1x to 8x), on-screen measurements, calibration of the measurements. Inverse video (negative images).
• Annotations: short text descriptions on screen, text reports (Windows .doc files) and voice comments (Windows .wav files) associated with certain points on the image, free hand drawings. The annotations can be shown or hidden in order to facilitate the examination of the image. There is a quick way of searching annotations, trhough the use of icons associated to each frame.

Sequence Editor. Example of annotations.

Sequence Editor. Example of zoom and measurements.

All these facilities (except the voice comment and text report edition) can be used on-line in a cooperative session between the two physicians, using an Internet (TCP/IP) connection, either through a high-speed modem, a LAN or a ISDN interface. CarePC provides for different levels of cooperation, depending on the user hardware (command synchronization and pointer sharing need only 28.8 Kbps; telephony needs > 64 Kbps). The faster the network, the better the results.

Voice coder selection window  

The application has a friendly user interface, and the operating system is Windows’95, so training is achieved in a very short period of time.

Hardware requirements

Minimum: PC compatible computer, Pentium 100, 16 Mbytes, Windows’95.

Recommended: Pentium 200, 32 Mbytes, SCSI hard disk, PCI bus, Video Accelerator card, Windows NT 4.0, soundcard (SoundBlaster compatible, full-duplex drivers), speakers, microphone, network adapter (modem, LAN or ISDN), TCP/IP protocols stack (Windows’95 includes it).

Conclusion

CarePC is an application that can make faster and simplify the work in a cooperative consultation between two cardiologists, eliminating the need of physical transfer of the tapes between the two hospitals and replacing it by a much faster telematic connection, and adding extra facilities as telephony.
 

Contact with

David Rincón, Josep Paradells, Sebastià Sallent

Applied Mathematics and Telematics Department, Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC)

Barcelona, Spain.