key: cord-0039081-w8f6ip1k authors: Huang, H.K. title: Medical imaging informatics research and development trends—an editorial date: 2005-02-01 journal: Comput Med Imaging Graph DOI: 10.1016/j.compmedimag.2004.09.003 sha: 4e66bf698ac008530676d29dbf73b31128fd243f doc_id: 39081 cord_uid: w8f6ip1k nan Grid computing is the most exciting incarnation of contemporary computing technologies including parallel, peer-to-peer, and client-server models. It has been used mostly in physical and engineering applications. Liu et al. present a model using the Data Grid for the backup and recovery of clinical image data-one of the most difficult problems facing large-scale clinical image databases today. Internet 2 is the high-speed communication backbones established by the education and research community during the past 5 years through the support of the US National Science Foundation (NSF). Internet DICOM-based medical image standard has been successfully implemented in diagnostic radiology during the past 10 years. However, despite the introduction of DICOM radiation therapy (RT) objects since 1999, the RT community has not yet to take advantage of the power and infrastructure of imaging informatics. Law presents an ePR model of DICOM-based radiation therapy information system, where seven RT DICOM objects are included, as a first attempt at such a development to utilize these concepts. In the past, ePR has been developed as a small-scale customized electronic patient based system. Cheung et al.'s paper describes the planning and preliminary results of an enterprise level ePR with image distribution in Hong Kong. The ePR system involves 43 hospitals (93% of the Hong Kong market) with a total of 29,000 beds. The ePR system is based on the existing Clinical Management System (CMS) developed in-house at the Hong Kong Hospital Authority which currently contains 6.4 million patients' records. One reason for developing the medical imaging infrastructure is to take advantage of tools within the infrastructure for large-scale longitudinal and horizontal clinical service and research, as well as systematic education and training. Among these tools are image processing, visualization, image matching, content-based retrieval, data mining, and computer-assisted detection and diagnosis. Four papers are included in this group: Imaging informatics is a very broad field using many tools and technologies, which may or may not be developed originally for medical imaging applications. Two papers are included in this group. Although, they may not fall exactly under the realm of imaging informatics, the outcomes of using imaging and technologies to achieve their goals are very similar to that of imaging informatics. In addition, some of the tools and technologies used have great potential of being adopted for imaging informatics applications and expanding the realm of Imaging Informatics. Montgomery et al.-User interface paradigms for patient-specific surgical planning C. Huang-Designing high-quality interactive multimedia learning modules. In surgery, the first innovations of using image-aided tools are 3D display and image-based surgical planning. The current research and development trend is in surgical simulation. Although contents in Montgomery et al.'s paper did not explicitly mention imaging informatics, readers can no doubt identify many terms and technologies in the paper that overlap with those used in imaging informatics. In interactive multimedia learning, images, graphic, drawings, video clips are among those being used as inputs to the learning tools. C. Huang's paper describes a methodology currently being used for building learning modules. In the paper, the author also points out the similarity of technologies used in imaging informatics and in interactive multimedia learning. Imaging informatics is dealing with clinical images that are acquired, stored, transmitted through public networks, and displayed. During these processes, the image integrity could have been compromised at any stage. HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is a mandate for medical image user compliance. However, HIPAA only tells the user to comply, but does not provide protocols to be followed. Zhou et al.'s paper 'HIPAA Compliant Auditing System for Medical Images' describes a framework for HIPAA compliance using a workflow-auditing paradigm. In summary, the 12 papers included in this Special Issue in Medical Imaging Informatics covers five groups of papers: state-of-the-art technologies ePR with images; image-aided detection and diagnosis; surgical simulation and interactive multimedia learning; and HIPAA compliance. Together, they provide a glimpse of current research and development (R&D) trends in this field. It is hoped that this issue will stimulate further R&D in imaging informatics to benefit the steadily fast growing medical imaging community. The development of a graduate program in health information management Description of a graduate program in clinical nursing informatics Medical informatics training at Stanford University School of Medicine Yearbook of medical informatics A study of collaboration among medical informatics research laboratories Stanford medical informatics: uncommon research, common goals Research at the Department of Medical Informatics, Statistics and Documentation of the University of Graz Twenty-five years of medical informatics education at Heildelberg/Heilbronn: discussion of a specialized curriculum for medical informatics Medical informatics: an emerging academic discipline and institutional priority Medical informatics: hiding our light under a bushel, or the Emperor's new clothes? Johannes ten Hoopen A, Ter Hofstede A. Progress with formalization in medical informatics? Medical informatics: a real discipline? Health professionals' views of informatics education: findings from the AMIA spring conference Education and research at the Department of Medical informatics: a real discipline? Medical image informatics infrastructure design and applications Medical informatics research and training at the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications Biomedical and health informatics research and education at the University of Washington Medical informatics education: the University of Utah experience NIH/NLM, IT15LM07356 'Training program for imaging based medical informatics PACS and imaging informatics: principles and applications