Medical image archives.

Most medical images are stored in databases, and creation, expansion, and integration of these archives has become central to advancement in many fields, including radiology, pathology, and dermatology. Image archives are important for clinical practice, education, and research in medicine. Clinical imaging modalities, such as digital radiography, computed tomography, ultrasonography, PET/SPECT, optical and magnetic resonance imaging produce large amounts of data that are managed, archived, and reported using picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) in an integrated healthcare enterprise (IHE) infrastructure. However, typical PACS and IHE systems are closed to ensure privacy, security and confidentiality. These systems are organized to support image interpretation and viewing transactions, with limited capabilities for population-based research or integration of ancillary data. Sharing of clinical medical image databases is relatively uncommon, despite the widespread prevalence of open public archives for other types of biological data, especially in genomics and proteomics. Current medical image archives are surveyed, and several applications are identified. The limitations of current systems are discussed, especially metadata creation and integration of heterogeneous data sources. Some of the most important future trends are delineated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]