High data rate transmission of medical images: Prospectus for experiments using the NASA advanced communications technology satellite

The cost of the delivery of high-quality healthcare continues to rise. This is due in part to the cost of high-tech diagnostic equipment and to the scarcity of physicians and technologists specializing in this type of care. Additionally, costs to the patient rise when travel is necessary to get access to the diagnostic tools only available in large metropolitan areas. It is hypothesized that cost can be reduced through the pooling of physician specialists in "Centers of Excellence" which are connected to medium and small-sized medical practices through some type of communications fabric. Diagnostic interpretations can then be geographically independent of the patient. This hypothesis will be tested, in part, through experiments conducted by Mayo Clinic, in association with a consortium of technical partners, via the NASA Advanced Communications Technology Satellite. Five clinical experiments will be conducted between January and June 1996 in Cardiac Catheterization Image Transmission, Echocardiology, Store-and-Forward Telemedicine, Teleradiology, and the diagnosis of congenital heart defects. Both postprocedure and intra-procedure images will be transmitted at data rates ranging from lOMbps to 155Mbps. In addition, experiments will be multi-threaded in order to characterize the robustness of the link.