Problem:

A manufacturer of cardiology imaging products asked us to develop a video acquisition system to replace an outdated 35mm cine film-based system used to capture images of the heart during catheterizations. The new system needed to provide physicians with the best possible image quality and archive years worth of images. It also needed to be easy and intuitive for lab technicians to operate, as well as robust enough to handle 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week operation. In addition, the system needed to provide all sites with remote dial-up access to facilitate administration, image quality assessment and fault analysis.

Typical cardiac cath lab control room with Heartlab Cinecapture system installed.

We were also asked to improve an existing, highly acclaimed angiographic review product. We added enhancements and additional capabilities improving image quality, playback speed, user interface and playback from other X-ray media formats.

Solution:

To meet these requirements, Bytes By Design developed a Windows NT-based system which acquires live X-ray video at 30 fps, compresses the loops and archives high-quality DICOM images to a massive ATM networked server. The GUI accepts patient demographics, displays system and network status and snapshots of the procedure. Recorded voice warnings reduce the possibility of errors. The remote administration client analyzes error logs, histograms images and reports error conditions.