Development of a PC-based Radiological Imaging Workstation

Low-cost image processing systems which can provide convenient access to image processing and analysis techniques hold great potential as diagnostic and research tools in medical imaging. At the University of Washington, we have developed a PC-based medium performance image processing system for use as an experimental radiological workstation. The workstation uses a standard IBM PC/AT personal computer augmented with a custom designed image processor implemented on two IBM PC/AT prototyping boards. Features of the system include up to 52 512 × 512 × 8 bit frame buffers (4 on the image processor board and up to 48 in the host computer memory) and a 512 × 512 × 4 bit graphics overlay memory, hardware zoom, pan and scroll, pseudo coloring, and a 60 Hz noninterlaced display. Many image processing and analysis functions are provided in this workstation, and all user requests are supported in an interactive fashion. For example, arithmetic and logical point operations between two 512 × 512 frame buffers require approximately 170 ms, while computationally intensive functions such as an 11 × 11 convolution or a full screen geometric transformation (warping) can be completed in less than 10 seconds. A full screen 2-D Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and Inverse FFT (IFFT) based on the row-column method can be completed in less than 20 seconds. The developed system can easily be configured into a DIN/PACS workstation or a biological imaging system. Hardware and software details of this workstation as well as user interface functions implemented will be discussed in the paper. Copyright © 1988 by the International Society for Optical Engineering. Proc. SPIE 914:1257-1264, 1988. Reprinted with permission.