Reprint of: Proceedings RSNA 2000, 86th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of Radiologists Society of North America. Radiology Vol. 217 (2000) S537.

 
 

A PACS project based on Intel, Linux and CHILI.

Uwe Engelmann, Schröter A, Schwab M, Eisenmann U, Bahner ML, Delorme S.

German Cancer Research Center, Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, D-69120 Heidelberg
 

Keywords: Teleradiology, PACS, CHILI, Opensource
 

Purpose

This paper describes a PACS project at the German Cancer Reseach Center which is based on Intel platforms and the Linux operating system. Specific requirements were fault tolerance, security measures, teleconferencing, and extensibility.
 

METHOD/MATERIALS

The Division of Radiology of the German Cancer Research Center is running two CTs, two MRIs, PET, and several US units. A PACS system has been build to store all digital imaging data in a long term digital archive.

The core of the realized PACS is a commercial, general purpose long term archive system, ADSM (IBM, Tivoli) which is in use at the German Cancer Center since 1994. It has currently a capacity of 27 TB in 3 tape libraries, using DLT4000 and DLT700 tapes. 1 TB is currently used by the PACS exclusively. A central image server is holding the current relevant images in a cache which is realized as RAID level 5 disk system with a capacity of 180 GB. The server has two Intel Pentium III processors with 500 MHz each. The operating system is Linux. Four diagnostic workstations with dual heads (Siemens 2183L) are available for image reporting. Two workstations have been installed at the CT and MRI consoles with color flat panels with a resolution of 1600 by 1024 pixels (SGI 1600SW). One workstation for radiotherapy planning is equipped with one 2183 grayscale monitor. All workstations have in common that they are based on Intel PIII 600 MHz CPUs with a local system disk with 18GB. All are running the Linux operating system. The network is a 100 Mbit Ethernet. The software is the CHILI-PACS system (STZ-Medizinische Informatik, Heidelberg, Germany). All workstations are realized as clients of the central PACS server, but have their local data base as a backup.

RESULTS

All CHILI clients are able to transmit data to local or remote workstations in different protocols. They are able to perform teleconferences with internal and external partners using the CHILI protocol. The CHILI webserver enables all existing computers in the local network to view the image data of the PACS with any web browser. The PlugIn mechnism of the CHILI workstations can be used to integrate additional functionality (e.g. 3D visualization, image analysis) into the existing environment. The system is based on the CHILI security concept, according to European and German requirements and law.

The installation of the system started in January 2000 and will be finished in September 2000.

CONCLUSIONS

The CHILI software concept has many advantages to other approaches. The main advantage of the selected hardware and operating system are its low price, high performance and flexibility.

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