On placement of the ACR-NEMA bus in picture archiving and communications systems

The ACR-NEMA standard (1985) allows different medical devices to communicate compatibly in a picture archiving and communication system (PACS) environment. The authors evaluate the performance of PACSs incorporating the ACR-NEMA standard. The ACR-NEMA standard requires that the ACR-NEMA bus be placed between any medical device and a network interface unit. The authors propose the removal of the ACR-NEMA bus from the archive-workstation path. Therefore, the ACR-NEMA protocol delays would be eliminated from all viewing requests. The ACR-NEMA bus is to be kept at the image generating equipment (IGE) workstations. The authors introduce the enhanced PACS architecture. Some numerical results of the architecture are shown and compared to results obtained by following the ACR-NEMA bus placement specification as stated in the standard.