In the frame of the EC-sponsored TELEMED project, videoconferencing was evaluated as a tool for Remote Expert Consultation (REC) in radiology. The REC environment has been established as a pan-European demonstrator for advanced telecommunication applications in medicine. Five European university hospitals have been interconnected using broadband networks at a speed of 2 Mbit/s and 140 Mbit/s. Videoconference was evaluated in more than 120 sessions. In the experiments, videoconference proved to be a useful tool for teleconsultations, providing a set of requirements identified as indispensable for medical videoconference such as remotely adjustable iris for the document camera are fulfilled. Diagnostic reliability of images recorded with our equipment proved acceptable for digitally acquired images while reliability is limited for conventional images with a high demand of spatial and contrast resolution. Regional spin-off applications that have been established at some participating sites underline the potential of videoconference in health care.

Date Published: 29 October 1993
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 1977, Video Communications and PACS for Medical Applications, (29 October 1993); doi: 10.1117/12.160496

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 1977:
Video Communications and PACS for Medical Applications
Rudy A. Mattheus; Andre J. Duerinckx; Peter J. van Otterloo, Editor(s)