EIR: Enterprise imaging repository, an alternative imaging archiving and communication system

The enormous number of studies performed at the Nuclear Medicine Department of University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) generates a huge amount PET/CT images daily. A DICOM workstation had been used as rdquomini-PACSrdquo to route all studies, which is historically proven to be slow due to various reasons. However, replacing the workstation with a commercial PACS server is not only cost inefficient; and more often, the PACS vendors are reluctant to take responsibility for the final integration of these components. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an alternative imaging archiving and communication system called Enterprise Imaging Repository (EIR). EIR consists of two distinguished components: an image processing daemon and a user friendly web interface. EIR not only reduces the overall waiting time of transferring a study from the modalities to radiologists' workstations, but also provides a more preferable presentation.