General Medical Image Processing Systems Design And Implementation

With the vigorous development of computer technology, it is possible now to process images and operate on the models of images by Personal Computers. Many years ago, the work was able to be done only by the high-level graphics and image processing workstations. At present, large number of hospitals and medical organizations are in great demand to the low cost systems for medical image processing as well as for medical image storage and communication (or briefly PACS system, for Picture Archiving and Communication System). Among those, the medical image processing system is essential for the image processing, graphics manipulation, 3-D data visualization, and the support for the complicated DICOM3 protocol related. In this thesis, we present a design and implementation of a common medical image processing system. We first analyze the requirement and establish the principles for the system design and implementation. With a functional introduction to the present medical image processing workstations or PACS systems, we made an analysis and classification to the common functions. Then a portable medical image processing system is designed and implemented based on the principle of object-oriented design. The functions of our system are extensible, and therefore, it is feasible to develop more powerful medical image processing workstations, or construct PACS systems based on the functions established in our system. In the thesis, we also give the definition and describe the implementation of DICOM3 protocol in detail. Based on the study and analysis to VTK (the Visualization ToolKits), we implemented the graphical and image processing, as well as the common visualization functions in the image processing system.