Technology for Medecine and Clinical Practice

The physicians and surgeons at Geneva University Hospital had a frustrating problem. The Radiology Department had installed new imaging devices such as high-definition, multi-detector scanners and hybrid devices that combine PET and CT technology. These advanced modalities were producing images that were rich in detail and could help them immensely in planning treatment. The physicians’ difficulty was in finding an effective way to view and analyze these images.

In the first place, if they wanted sophisticated image analysis they usually had to go to the Radiology Department and use the workstations that came with the imaging systems, because those workstations were too expensive to install in other departments. Secondly, the workstation software was not physician-friendly. And finally, the software didn’t really provide the kinds of tools the physicians needed to analyze DICOM imaging data coming from different modalities, to come up with an effective, efficient diagnosis.

What hospital clinicians needed and wanted was a sophisticated analysis system that they could use in their own offices and conference rooms. They needed to review images for tumor board meetings. They needed image analysis within easy reach to plan neurosurgery, or joint replacement, or cardiac surgery, or any of the immense variety of procedures and treatments they wanted to apply.

The answer: Apple technology and a powerful, Mac-based open-source DICOM viewer known as OsiriX.

OsiriX was conceived by Professor Osman Ratib, and written by his colleague radiologist Dr. Antoine Rosset, when they worked together at UCLA in 2004 and saw the need for a more robust viewer and analysis tool. It was developed into its present form by Rosset and Geneva computer scientist Joris Heuberger. When Ratib and Rosset returned to Geneva University Hospital from UCLA in 2005, they were Mac enthusiasts on a mission.

“The hospital’s 2D web viewer was inadequate,” says Ratib. “Clinicians needed to see images from different scanners - all on one workstation. They needed to browse between multiple prior studies. They wanted to perform measurements of tumor size, organ function, and other clinical parameters. They needed a sophisticated navigation tool that lets them fuse different modalities in 3D. OsiriX, running on the Mac platform, could give them what they needed.”

OsiriX is an image processing software dedicated to DICOM images (".dcm" / ".DCM" extension) produced by imaging equipment (MRI, CT, PET, PET-CT, SPECT-CT, Ultrasounds, ...). It can also read many other file formats: TIFF (8,16, 32 bits), JPEG, PDF, AVI, MPEG and Quicktime. It is fully compliant with the DICOM standard for image comunication and image file formats. OsiriX is able to receive images transferred by DICOM communication protocol from any PACS or imaging modality (C-STORE SCP/SCU, and Query/Retrieve : C-MOVE SCU/SCP, C-FIND SCU/SCP, C-GET SCU/SCP) .

OsiriX has been specifically designed for navigation and visualization of multimodality and multidimensional images: 2D Viewer, 3D Viewer, 4D Viewer (3D series with temporal dimension, for example: Cardiac-CT) and 5D Viewer (3D series with temporal and functional dimensions, for example: Cardiac-PET-CT). The 3D Viewer offers all modern rendering modes: Multiplanar reconstruction (MPR), Surface Rendering, Volume Rendering and Maximum Intensity Projection (MIP). All these modes support 4D data and are able to produce image fusion between two different series (for example: PET-CT).

OsiriX is at the same time a DICOM PACS workstation for imaging and an image processing software for medical research (radiology and nuclear imaging), functional imaging, 3D imaging, confocal microscopy and molecular imaging.

OsiriX is available in 32-bit and 64-bit format. The 64-bit version allows you to load an unlimited number of images, exceeding the 4-GB limit of 32-bit applications. The 64-bit version is also fully optimized for Intel multi-cores processors, offering the best performances for 3D renderings.

OsiriX supports a complete plug-ins architecture that allows you to expand the capabilities of OsiriX for your personal needs! This plug-in architecture gives you access to the powerfull Cocoa framework with an easy object-oriented and dynamic language: Objective-C.

OsiriX project started in 2003 in California, USA. This software is conceived and developed by Dr. Antoine Rosset, with the help of Joris Heuberger, a computer scientist. They currently work in Geneva, Switzerland. Dr Antoine Rosset is a radiologist, specialized in MRI and CT, working in LaTour Hospital.

http://www.osirix-viewer.com/