Digital archive center: implementation for a radiology department.

OBJECTIVE. In this article, we describe the implementation of a digital archive center for a radiology department in a 700-bed teaching hospital. MATERIALS AND METHODS. The archive center consists of two identical archive systems, each comprising five components: an archive server, a data-base server, an optical disk library, a stand-alone optical disk drive, and a communication network. An image management system controls the image traffic from acquisition devices to display stations. A fault-tolerant mechanism was built into the archive center to achieve a 100% uptime. RESULTS. The center has been in operation for over 6 months. We have not experienced a single total system failure during this period. It currently archives all digital images from three MR units and four CT scanners and selected images from three computed radiographic systems and two laser film digitizers. The center archives between 1.5 and 2.0 gigabytes of images per workday. CONCLUSION. With its built-in fault-tolerant mechanism, we believe that the implemented archive center is very reliable and is suitable for a radiology department to archive its digital images.