For radiologists reading studies and clinicians accessing medical imaging storage solutions, speed is critical.
Slow image retrieval from legacy PACS systems hinders diagnosis and care decisions. This article examines how migrating images to the cloud significantly accelerates retrieval and viewing across healthcare networks.
We will look at benchmarks around faster access, transfer times, and viewing that demonstrate the cloud’s speed advantage. Let’s examine the data and see how much faster the cloud can work.
Faster Image Retrieval
The first speed advantage comes from faster access to imaging datasets for analysis. Cloud storage offers two key retrieval improvements:
Concurrent Access
Cloud object stores allow unlimited concurrent reads without bottlenecks. This prevents queued requests when multiple users access images simultaneously. Local PACS servers often limit concurrent image analysis.
Global Data Replication
Cloud stores replicate images across global data centers. Locality algorithms serve images from the nearest hub for low latency.
This provides LAN-like speeds regardless of user location. Local PACS lack replication.
Together these retrieve any image volume in 200 milliseconds or less, up to 100x faster than legacy PACS. Diagnosis accelerates when images rapidly load for reading.
Increased Transfer Speeds
After retrieval, images must be transferred to diagnostic workstations for analysis. Here again, the cloud thrives:
Scalable Bandwidth
Cloud connections leverage flexible Internet backbone bandwidth not available locally. Cloud vendors expand capacity continuously to prevent congestion, enabling smooth large dataset transfers.
Direct Peering
Vendors peer cloud networks directly with hospitals for optimized routing. This reduces network hops and avoids Internet bottlenecks. Local PACS rely on congested shared networks.
Proximity Acceleration
As mentioned above, cloud replication reduces round-trip times. Local PACS with centralized archives can’t serve remote users as quickly.
With these advantages combined, cloud transfers achieve speeds beyond 1 Gbps compared to 10-100 Mbps for legacy PACS.
Snappier Cloud Viewing
Finally, cloud viewing software itself accelerates critical workflows:
Streaming Technology
Cloud viewers segment images for streaming. This initiates rendering before entire sets transfer. PACS waits for full transfers before viewing. Streaming starts diagnosis seconds earlier.
In-browser Views
Cloud enables direct in-browser viewing without downloads. However, some advanced PACS still require viewing via installed fat clients, which has a performance overhead.
Fluid Navigation
Rapid rendering and tensor processing units let users pan and zoom across giga-pixel images fluidly. Laggy PACS viewers frustrate physicians.
Together, these shave seconds off multi-image reads. Radiologists can navigate studies faster with tighter reading workflows.
Meeting Demands of Modern Medicine
For time-sensitive specialties like stroke, cardiology, and oncology, imaging speed matters.
The data shows the cloud removes bottlenecks at each stage of workflows. Faster access, transfer, and manipulation of large medical images keeps care teams productive.
As image sizes and study volumes grow, high-performance cloud imaging storage and management will only become more crucial.
Cloud adoption today future-proofs providers to meet the demands of modern coordinated care. Healthcare organizations owe it to patients to unlock the speed the cloud offers.
