title: A web-based image viewer for multiple PET-CT follow-up studies.
abstract: There exist many viewers for single-modal medical images that are efficient and are equipped with powerful analysis tools. However, there is a distinct lack of efficient image viewers for multi-modality images, particularly for displaying multiple follow-up studies that depict a patient's response to treatment over time. Such viewers would be required to display large amounts of image data. In this study, we present the TAGIGEN viewer--a web-based image viewer designed specifically for the visualisation of multi-modality follow-up studies. We innovate by defining a series of dynamically generated image grid layouts that display sets of related images together in order to improve the ability to compare and assimilate the myriad images. We adopted a web-based client-server image streaming technology, thus enabling interactive navigation of the images in a computationally efficient manner. Furthermore, our web-based approach is interoperable and requires no software installation. We evaluated the ability of our viewer in displaying and understanding a patient's follow-up images in a case study with combined positron emission tomography and computed tomography (PET-CT) follow-up scans. We conducted a usability survey on 10 participants to measure the usefulness of our viewer, used as an outpatient viewer e.g. viewer designed for use by the patients, in tracking a patient's disease state across four PET-CT studies. Our initial results suggest that our viewer was able to efficiently visualise the patient data over time, and that the web-based implementation was fast (loading on average within 5.6 seconds with real-time navigation) and easy to use (overall survey score higher than 4 / 5).
authors.affiliation: BMIT Research Group, School of IT, University of Sydney, Australia.
authors.forename: Daiki
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Haraguchi
authors.forename: Jinman
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Ashnil
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.forename: Liviu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Constantinescu
authors.forename: Lingfeng
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wen
authors.forename: David Dagan
authors.initials: DD
authors.lastname: Feng
mesh_terms: D003196:Computer Graphics; D057225:Data Mining / Q000379:methods*; D003628:Database Management Systems; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D020407:Internet; D008223:Lymphoma / Q000175:diagnosis*; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography / Q000379:methods*; D011873:Radiology Information Systems; D013382:Subtraction Technique; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*; D014584:User-Computer Interface