Incubator/MEDICUS

This project entered hibernation October 21, 2008. It is not an active Incubation project.

MEDICUS (Medical Imaging and Computing for Unified Information Sharing) is a Globus Alliance Incubator project to federate Medical Imaging and Computing Resources for clinical and research applications.

The objectives of the MEDICUS project are to promote transparent and non-proprietary solutions for medical image processing, and medical image and data sharing between heath care providers, physicians, and researchers in the life sciences. The Globus Toolkit provides the necessary architecture platform and standards to engage in this diverse and difficult field. As such it provides a vendor independent solution to efficiently communicate medical images and image outcome at various levels in the healthcare enterprise. This project will hopefully excel imaging research and health care by delivering a Globus Toolkit compliant extension to efficiently communicate medical image, diagnosis, and related data between health care providers in Grid environments.

The core of the MEDICUS project is federation, sharing, and virtualization of large-scale medical images using the Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) standard within Medical Data and Health Grids based on the Globus Toolkit OGSA architecture. The DICOM Globus Interface Service (DGIS) is the first of a series of Grid services to accomplish unified sharing of medical images. It provides a service oriented architecture (SOA) for DICOM images to enable health providers and healthcare organizations to create data grid virtualization. MEDICUS creates an abstract layer between data, meta-data, and Grid users linking multiple DICOM storage service provides (SSP) (Repositories) and meta catalog databases (Registries). Thus publication and discovery of medical information in the Grid, i.e. DICOM medical images, happens on the Grid virtual layer, decoupled from the health provider databases, networks, and IT resources. As such MEDICUS does not interfere with mission critical clinical workflows, but extends image workflows and knowledge discovery to the Grid. The virtual Grid layer is invisible to the Physician and allows reuse of existing DICOM query/retrieve (PACS workstations), storage (PACS) equipment, and workflows without any modifications to the health provider's infrastructure.

MEDICUS provides

• Standards based security model (MEDICUS release 2) integrating Internet2 Shibboleth Identity Provider (IdP), SAML assertions, MyProxy X.509 certificate framework for preserving protected health information (PHI) (see IOS article below)
• Vendor independent Grid Enterprise PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) deployment by vertically integrating open-source and standards based Globus Toolkit services for high availability, fault-tolerance, data replication, and disaster recovery.
• DICOM legacy support to connect medical image modalities (MR, CT, X-Ray, etc.) to data Grids
• Open-source image archiving and distributed warehousing for large-scale multi-center clinical trials
• Medical image guided drug discovery in combination with remote processing (GRAM service)
• Flexible Fault-tolerant off-site Grid DICOM image storage for man-made or natural disaster recovery
• Cost-efficient tele-radiology and image workflow between community care facilities and remote specialist using the Grid

Slides describing the DICOM image workflow within a Globus Grid and implementation details can be found here .

User Communities

The Children’s Oncology Group (COG) Grid (www.curesearch.org) funded by NCI/NIH: University of Alabama at Birmingham (AL), Childrens Hospital Los Angeles (CA), Nemours Children's Clinic, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Memphis (TN), Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (OH) Children's Hospital Columbus (OH), Methodist Children's Hospital (TX), Children's National Medical Center (DC), Texas Children's Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine (US), C.S. Mott Children's Hospital (MI), Mayo Clinic and Foundation (MN), Children's Hospital of Pittsburg (PA), Children's Hospital of Orange County (CA), National Cancer Institute - Pediatric Branch (MD), Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (PA), Doernbecher Children's Hospital-OHSU (OR), Children's Memorial Medical Center at Chicago (IL), University of Minnesota Cancer Center (MN), Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto), Suny-Upstate Medical Center (NY), University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OK), Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center (WA), UT Southwestern Medical Center (TX), UT Southwestern Medical Center (TX), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital (MA), University of Mississippi Medical Center Children's Hospital (MS), Washington University Medical Center (MO), Indiana University - Riley Children's Hospital (IN), Hospital Sainte-Justine (Montreal), Stanford University Medical Center (CA), Children’s Hospital Boston (MA), Columbia Presbyterian College of Physicians and Surgeons (NY), Connecticut Children's Medical Center, The Children's Hospital at Westmead, McMaster University, Cancer Institute of New Jersey, Cooks Children's Medical Center (TX), Presbyterian Hospital (NC), Marshfield Clinic (WI), Royal Children's Hospital, A. B. Chandler Medical Center (KY), The Childrens Mercy Center (MO), ALL Childrens Hospital (FL), The Children's Hospital at The Cleveland Clinic (OH), University of North Carolina (NC), Quality Assurance Review Center (QARC), Columbia University Presbyterian Hospital (NY), IWK Health Centre Baptist Children's Hospital (FL), The University of Kansas Hospital Sacred Heart Hospital (FL), Miller Children's Hospital/Harbor UCLA (CA).

The New Approaches to Neuroblastoma Therapy (NANT) Grid (www.nant.org) funded by the Neuroblastoma Cancer Foundation: University of California San Francisco (UCSF) (CA), University of Wisconsin Cancer Center (WI), Childrens Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) (CA), University of Chicago Comer's Children's Hospital (IL), Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (OH), Texas Children's Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine (TX), C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, Univ. of Michigan (MI), Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) (PA), Children's Memorial Medical Center at Chicago (IL), University of Minnesota Cancer Center (MN), Seattle Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center (WA), Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (GA), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital (MA), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children's Hospital (MA), Stanford University Medical Center (CA), Hospital for Sick Children University of Toronto (Toronto).

References

• Erberich SG, Silverstein JC, Chervenak A, Schuler R, Nelson MD, Kesselman C. Globus MEDICUS - Federation of DICOM Medical Imaging Devices into Healthcare Grids. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, IOS Press, Volume 126, p:269-278, 2007
• Erberich SG, Bhandekar ME, Chervenak A, Yordy R, Larsen C, Nelson MD, Kesselman C. Next Generation Enterprise PACS: Integration of Open Grid Service Architecture with Commercial PACS. Educational Exhibit, Informatics-3131, Proceeding 93rd RSNA Annual Meeting 2006, Chicago
• Erberich SG, Bhandekar M, Chervenak A, Nelson MD, Kesselman C. DICOM globus Interface service for clinical and research PACS: A globus toolkit web service for medical data grids. Int Journal of Computer Assistant Radiology and Surgery, 2006, 1:87-105; p100-102, Springer, Heidelberg
• Erberich SG, Chervenak A, Bhandekar M, Nelson MD, Kesselman C. Replication management service for fault-tolerant archiving: A globus toolkit web service for medical data grids. Int Journal of Computer Assistant Radiology and Surgery, 2006,1:87-105; p102-104, Springer, Heidelberg
• Erberich SG, Dixit M, Chervenak A, Chen V, Nelson MD, Kesselmann C. Grid Based Medical Image Workflow and Archiving for Research and Enterprise PACS Applications. PACS and Imaging Informatics, SPIE Medical Imaging, 6145-32, 2006
• Erberich SG, Chervenak A, Dixit ME, Chen V, Nelson MD, Kesselman C. Open Grid Services Architecture for Grid-PACS. InfoRAD 9611 PACS-i, Proceeding 92st RSNA Annual Meeting 2005, Chicago
• Espert IB, Garcaa VH, Quilis JD. An OGSA Middleware for managing medical images using ontologies. J Clin Monit Comput. 2005 Oct;19(4-5):295-305.
• Shannon Hastings, Stephen Langella, Scott Oster, Joel Saltz. Distributed Data Management and Integration Framework: The Mobius Project. Proceedings of the Global Grid Forum 11 (GGF11) Semantic Grid Applications Workshop, June 2004, 20-38.

Disclaimer: The tools provided by the MEDICUS project are not approved for medical practice under the current Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines. These tools are under “off-label” restriction. The user of the MEDICUS tools accepts this disclaimer by downloading and using the software and is solely responsible to announce “off-label” usage, to comply with Institutional Review Board (IRB) guidelines, and any liability arising from using the software. The MEDICUS project team cannot be held responsible for any actions, damages, or liabilities caused by the use of the software.

Keywords

Health Grid, Medical Data Grid, Virtualization, Grid PACS, Enterprise PACS, DICOM Globus Grid, SOA

Incubator Product Metadata

Status

MEDICUS is a newly accepted Incubator Project, released 18th of August 2006, as defined by the Incubator Process Guidelines.

Roadmap

Release candidate version 1 (initial release) - see download section.

• DICOM version 3 conform C-Echo, C-Store, C-Find, C-Get/C-Move operations
• Complete DICOM Q/R for Patient and Study root models at patient, study, series, and instance levels
• Optimized Grid storage format using loss-less compressed series packages (network performance gain between factor 2-10)
• Parallel C-Move streaming of DICOM series to AE with independent Grid data pipelines
• Off-site storage provider for fault tolerant image replication and disaster recovery
• Standards based X.509 certificate authorization
• Grid store and Q/R from any DICOM legacy device - no changes required
• Globus/IBM OGSA-DAI DICOM Meta Data Catalog [1]
• Globus MyProxy X.509 credential management [2]
• Globus DICOM image Replication Management (Globus RLS) [3]

MEDICUS Core, release candidate, July 2007, includes:

• All release candiate 1 features
• SAML Attribute Authority
• optimized data mover
• full RLS replication management
• Patient Centric Authorization (PCA)</b> model for preserving of HIPAA Protected Health Information (PHI) in clinical HealthGrids

Note: This project does not currently publish a roadmap via the Globus Bugzilla!

Download

source code request'

Installation Manual

Installation and configuration instructions can be found here: MEDICUS_Installation.html.

Incubator Project Metadata

Advisers

Marvin D. Nelson, M.D., CHLA/USC (Radiology)
David A. Clunie, M.D., RadPharm (DICOM and Radiology)
Reynold Yordy, Program Manager Internet PACS, Fuji Medical Systems (Industry)
Jason Crane, UCSF Radiology (Informatics and Security)
Jonathan C. Silverstein, M.D., Argonne National Laboratory (Informatics and Radiology)
Mary Kratz, TATRC (HealthGrid and U.S. Army relations)

Committers

Stephan G. Erberich
Manasee Bhandekar
Ann Chervenak
Mike D'Arcy
Carl Kesselman
Nigel Parsad
Laura Pearlman (Chair)
Charles Bacon (Mentor)

If you would like to become a committer, guidelines are [here]. Participation in the project is voluntary and does not constitute a responsibility or endorsement.

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