Image container storage format for applications in echocardiography simulation

The authors discuss a method for storage of medical imaging data in a format that is suitable for applications requiring low-latency access as well performing processing in a resource constrained environment. In particular, a Echocar-diography simulator is considered in the context of a web or a mobile application. The objectives are to allow the simulation input data to be accessed from network at run time, as well as convey information on the regions within the image that the simulation algorithm needs to process. The proposed format stores information (both data and geometrical properties) on sub-regions, while omitting the rest of the source image. Region definitions allow for reconstruction the original image at run time reusing already present platform interfaces and libraries. At the same time they clearly delineate the areas that will be processed by the simulation step, effectively limiting the actual processing only to the regions that are relevant to the application. The authors discuss the results of utilizing the proposed storage method on a set of angio-CT samples.