TeraRecon Inc. will be showcasing new innovations for its Aquarius suite of advanced visualization offerings at SIIM 2008.
The Aquarius iNtuition platform is designed to scale from a single isolated radiology department, to a large, multi-site healthcare enterprise with ease. It is designed to support both centralized and distributed configurations equally well. A multi-site enterprise with relatively slow network links between sites can deploy an Aquarius iNtuition solution today with multiple servers that provide local performance, while acting as one large “virtual server” presenting a single database to any user at any site, using TeraRecon’s “Mutual Awareness” technology.
Aquarius iNtuition is reportedly equally well equipped to operate in a centralized configuration where one central datacenter provides advanced visualization services to a distributed enterprise with faster inter-site links. Aquarius iNtuition supports server redundancy for both data and rendering services, automatic fail-over to a backup system in the event of hardware or software failure and headless load balancing where one AquariusNET server can be assigned as a database manager, supporting a single common storage while allowing multiple rendering nodes to operate as data-less processors handling incoming rendering tasks in a transparent fashion. In addition to rendering tasks being evenly distributed across the available resource, complete failure of any node can be tolerated and the node replaced without compromising operation of the overall enterprise solution. This architecture is designed to allow for virtually infinite scalability with high availability and fault tolerance built in.
Aquarius iNtuition also supports long-term enterprise planning, in that a distributed solution deployed today can be easily centralized at a later date, without the need for a completely new investment in capital equipment, said the company.
TeraRecon’s advanced visualization platform provides a comprehensive suite of decision support tools that can be integrated into the imaging workflow to speed diagnostic interpretation and enrich the imaging experience with additional information that would not otherwise be available. The AquariusAPS server hosts multiple optional pre-processing engines to filter for potentially interesting features in volumetric examinations, and to automatically identify and label anatomy. Automatic segmentation and centerline extraction are also supported to prepare the examination for the speediest diagnostic interpretation. The output of the AquariusAPS server, if available, is then employed by the AquariusNET server and the Aquarius iNtuition client to drive streamlined and tailored Workflow Templates which know in advance how to swiftly get to specific areas of interest, speeding the process of navigation through the dataset so that the physician may focus their time and concentration on the interpretation process itself.
Results from the Aquarius iNtuition session can then be delivered to referring physicians via the enterprise-friendly, browser-based AquariusWEB viewer which uses only JavaScript technology to deliver results in an interactive but optimized package to referring physicians. The AquariusWEB viewer can be deployed via a simple URL link, reportedly making it possible to seamlessly embed the viewer into an EMR or physician portal for secure deliver in the correct patient context. It is even possible to open and display these images on a JavaScript-capable PDA.