Digital image and audio communications: toward a global information infrastructure

Recent advances in digital imaging technology combined with the next generation digital wireless communication has great potential to transform the paradigm for how humans will communicate visual information with one another in the next century. The first major change is that the model of one message from a single source to many clients (mass broadcasting) will be replaced by a model of many messages from multiple sources to many receivers (peer to peer). A second major change is that the model will move from a passive client, which only receives messages to an interactive client able to respond and even direct the information content to itself. This will have great impact in the experience of visual communication in the next decade. In this paper, we shall outline some of the key technological challenges in terms of bandwidth, processing power, data rate, data sizes and human factors required to influence this paradigm shift resulting from the merger of digital imaging and digital wireless communication technologies.

Com o advento dos equipamentos digitais de diagnóstico médico, houve uma diminuição do uso de filmes emradiologia. Em contrapartida, o gerenciamento de imagens médicas (IMs) digitalizadas tornou-se uma tarefa crítica. Neste trabalho, apresentamos um protótipo, com base em tecnologias worldwide web (www), que realiza essa função. Ele contempla um servidor de IMs que possibilita a pesquisa e a recuperação dessas imagens armazenadas como arquivos digital imaging and communications in medicine (Dicom), além de receber requisições de serviços de equipamento sem aplicações compatíveis com esse padrão. As IMs podem ser visualizadas e manipuladas dentro de um navegador web (o cliente da aplicação) por meio de uma aplicação Java (applet). Tal abordagem oferece algumas vantagens em relação aos tradicionais sistemas de arquivamento e comunicação de imagens (picture archiving and communication systems [Pacs]), entre as quais a independência de plataformas e facilidade de instalação e de manutenção, a distribuição de dados e a integração com outros sistemas, dentro ou fora da instituição. Basta que se utilize a implementação de políticas de segurança. A simplicidade e a flexibilidade das tecnologias web viabilizam o uso dessa aplicação que provê recursos tanto para o gerenciamento quanto para a manipulação de IMs.

An electronic database for outcome studies that includes digital radiographs

Digital image communication over public networks requires a high level of security to protect picture elements that represent information. Security is an important and challenging issue that can be solved using cryptography techniques. Generally, image encryption techniques are based on multiple rounds and iterations. In this paper, a secured lightweight cryptosystem is designed based on lookup table operations that reduce computational overhead, resource requirement and power consumption compared to traditional security mechanisms. In this context, one-dimensional elementary cellular automaton has been combined with Henon chaotic map to design a cryptosystem, which can produce unprecedented results in cryptography. Initially, state attractors for rule space are investigated and analyzed in Wolfram’s cellular automata to extract the properties and functional abilities to perform cryptographic operations. A novel algorithm of keyed transposition cipher is applied to digital image in P-Box module to produce shuffled image. Then, the extracted properties of ECA are preserved in a tabular form and further used in the diffusion process. Based on the simulation and comparison with other existing mechanisms, it is evident that the proposed algorithm is promising and obstructive to all kinds of statistical attacks, and it yields security primacy in various areas of cryptography. Encryption/Decryption is based on indexed based lookup tables principal using ECA and can be easily implemented using logic gates. The proposed algorithm provides confidentiality and can be adopted in IoT networks that require lightweight cryptography modules. Experimental results of color and gray images demonstrate flourishing results in the real-time environment of cryptography.

The information industry is the main branch of the modern economy. The processes of informatization lead to qualitative changes in society itself in the direction of acquiring sustainable features of the modern information society, the technological basis of which is the global information infrastructure (GII). GII provides free access to information resources to every inhabitant of the planet and provides a set of communication services that provide an open set of applications, covers all types of information and provides the opportunity to receive it anywhere, anytime, at an affordable price and at an affordable price quality. The creation and operation of modern satellite communication systems contributes to the creation of a global information infrastructure. Satellite communications, which is a promising component of modern cyberspace infrastructure, is qualitatively changing the entire telecommunications industry and affecting the usual way of life. Personal satellite communication systems have significant advantages over mobile communication systems. Today, the use of new spacecraft with improved characteristics is expected, which will represent almost the entire range of satellite services. According to documents submitted to the US Federal Communications Commission, satellites in space will «communicate» with each other at a frequency of more than 10 thousand GHz using a laser beam. Ground stations and user terminals will be communicated on 12 GHz radio bands. The promised data rate is 1 Gbps for each consumer. Regarding potential Starlink applications, SpaceX’s management points to the risky nature of the low-bandwidth broadband satellite business and adds that SpaceX plans to use its Starlink satellites not only to provide broadband Internet connectivity in remote areas of the world, but also to connect on other planets.

A global infrastructure is emerging in the 21ST century in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) are becoming more and more pervasive. Dynamic innovation processes continue to give rise to the social and technological capabilities that could release the potential of ICT for development. Products produced in this diverse field have a wide application in society. It is a field that developing countries need to harness and develop considerable technical competence. Governments, businesses and other stakeholders in developing countries need to coordinate their actions in order to amplify the social and economic benefits of ICTs and to reduce the risk of exclusion. This paper presents a perspective of the ICT infrastructure in Zimbabwe. The increasing spread of ICT opens new opportunities for Zimbabwe to harness these technologies and services to serve its development goals. By investing in its national information infrastructures, Zimbabwe can experience the predicted social and economic benefits of a global information infrastructure. The paper gives a detailed coverage of recommendations for the case of Zimbabwe.

The popular, business, and scientific media are full of predictions and promises for the national and global information infrastructures. However, one key problem is enabling interoperability in an open communications environment. In digital communications, simple examination does not reveal what a stream of bits represents-bits are bits. Headers and descriptors, a labeling mechanism, provide important identification for bit streams and thereby enable interoperability. Our work on headers and descriptors is part of a continuing effort to understand and foster the convergence and interplay of computing, communications, and interactive media. The header/descriptor concept, as represented here, began with US based efforts to define an advanced television system, high definition television (HDTV). Cross industry harmonization objectives, especially interoperability with digital computer and telecommunications systems, became formal selection criteria for the Federal Communications Commission's advanced television selection process. We explain the objectives and rationale underlying our work on headers and descriptors, and propose specific design concepts for achieving a truly universal header. An attractive, accessible, and sustainable information infrastructure depends on easy data sharing and preservation across varying systems. This larger goal, not simply the market needs of advanced television, drives our efforts.

Traditionally, the annual report opens the World Professional Crimea Forum. Primarily, the speaker focuses on the concept of digital economy interpreted as the economic relations system based on the digital information and communication technologies. The Program “Digital economy of the Russian Federation” is reviewed. Several concepts, e. g. bitcoin and blockchain, Industry 4.0, New Internet, etc., are defined. The current problems of the Internet are examined, in particular, the lack of the single management and development center. The statistical data on the profile and involvement of the internet users is reported. Special attention is given to using Internet in Russia and the related problem of copyright in Russia and worldwide. The role of open access in building the knowledge environment and the role of the main contributors to the process, namely, publishers, libraries, educational institutions, are emphasized. Online education and accessible seamless education environment are specified as the main trends in education, The key vectors of developing knowledge content and its application in the digital environment are defined, these are: inclusiveness, artificial intelligence and green (sustainable) libraries, etc. The current situation in the global book market is evaluated on the basis of the results of the London Book Fair 2018. The project “The modern digital educational environment in the Russian Federation” is examined along with the projected results. The role of the National Electronic Library as the major innovative library project and the national information system is emphasized. The author concludes that the libraries of the future become an essential part of the national and global information infrastructure.

Responsibilities in the Context of the Global Information Infrastructure

Machine learning (ML) is revolutionizing image-based diagnostics in pathology and radiology. ML models have shown promising results in research settings, but the lack of interoperability between ML systems and enterprise medical imaging systems has been a major barrier for clinical integration and evaluation. The DICOM® standard specifies information object definitions (IODs) and services for the representation and communication of digital images and related information, including image-derived annotations and analysis results. However, the complexity of the standard represents an obstacle for its adoption in the ML community and creates a need for software libraries and tools that simplify working with datasets in DICOM format. Here we present the highdicom library, which provides a high-level application programming interface (API) for the Python programming language that abstracts low-level details of the standard and enables encoding and decoding of image-derived information in DICOM format in a few lines of Python code. The highdicom library leverages NumPy arrays for efficient data representation and ties into the extensive Python ecosystem for image processing and machine learning. Simultaneously, by simplifying creation and parsing of DICOM-compliant files, highdicom achieves interoperability with the medical imaging systems that hold the data used to train and run ML models, and ultimately communicate and store model outputs for clinical use. We demonstrate through experiments with slide microscopy and computed tomography imaging, that, by bridging these two ecosystems, highdicom enables developers and researchers to train and evaluate state-of-the-art ML models in pathology and radiology while remaining compliant with the DICOM standard and interoperable with clinical systems at all stages. To promote standardization of ML research and streamline the ML model development and deployment process, we made the library available free and open-source at https://github.com/herrmannlab/highdicom.

The twenty-first century military communications will depend critically on satellite systems for their global reach. The two major networking technologies underlying the global information infrastructure (GII) will be asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and Internet (IP). The seamless operation of ATM and Internet over the hybrid (satellite and terrestrial) GII will be essential for the unhampered access, dissemination and exchange of information. However, there are major challenges to achieve seamless operation for ATM and Internet via satellite systems. Specific issues related to asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and internet standards to function efficiently and provide high-quality service over satellite links and networks are discussed. Standardization activities for terrestrial and satellite interoperability of ATM and Internet Protocols (IP) are described. New technologies developed to address these issues are presented, including dynamic adaptive coding, data compression, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Proxy, bandwidth on demand, and traffic management. These technologies are currently incorporated in COMSAT Laboratories products such as COMSAT Link Accelerators for ATM and IP and the LINKWAY/sup TM/ 2000.

The demands of digital image processing, communications and multimedia applications are growing more rapidly than traditional design methods can fulfill them. Previously, only custom hardware designs could provide the performance required to meet the demands of these applications. However, hardware design has reached a crisis point. Hardware design can no longer deliver a product with the required performance and cost in a reasonable time for a reasonable risk. Software based designs running on conventional processors can deliver working designs in a reasonable time and with low risk but cannot meet the performance requirements. What is needed is a media processing approach that combines very high performance, a simple programming model, complete programmability, short time to market and scalability. The Universal Micro System (UMS) is a solution to these problems. The UMS is a completely programmable (including I/O) system on a chip that combines hardware performance with the fast time to market, low cost and low risk of software designs.© (1999) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

It is shown that the capability to transfer processed visual data between deployed forces can be provided by adding an IS-10 system to the existing sensors and communication equipment. The IS-10 system can provide distribution of tactical information between sources and consumers, a vital need in the modern battle scenario. A picture from external video sensors, with appended graphics and text for clarification, is distributed via a common data link, contributing significantly to the effective management of the battle. The addition of the IS-10 system may be implemented in various integration levels, from a stand-alone, new, fully equipped station to a processing box that is connected to existing video and COMMs equipment, to a few cards physically embedded in existing electronic equipment.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

In order for enterprise imaging to be successful across a multitude of specialties, systems, and sites, standards are essential to categorize and classify imaging data. The HIMSS-SIIM Enterprise Imaging Community believes that the Digital Imaging Communications in Medicine (DICOM) Anatomic Region Sequence, or its equivalent in other data standards, is a vital data element for this role, when populated with standard coded values. We believe that labeling images with standard Anatomic Region Sequence codes will enhance the user’s ability to consume data, facilitate interoperability, and allow greater control of privacy. Image consumption—when a user views a patient’s images, he or she often wants to see relevant comparison images of the same lesion or anatomic region for the same patient automatically presented. Relevant comparison images may have been acquired from a variety of modalities and specialties. The Anatomic Region Sequence data element provides a basis to allow for efficient comparison in both instances. Interoperability—as patients move between health care systems, it is important to minimize friction for data transfer. Health care providers and facilities need to be able to consume and review the increasingly large and complex volume of data efficiently. The use of Anatomic Region Sequence, or its equivalent, populated with standard values enables seamless interoperability of imaging data regardless of whether images are used within a site or across different sites and systems. Privacy—as more visible light photographs are integrated into electronic systems, it becomes apparent that some images may need to be sequestered. Although additional work is needed to protect sensitive images, standard coded values in Anatomic Region Sequence support the identification of potentially sensitive images, enable facilities to create access control policies, and can be used as an interim surrogate for more sophisticated rule-based or attribute-based access control mechanisms. To satisfy such use cases, the HIMSS-SIIM Enterprise Imaging Community encourages the use of a pre-existing body part ontology. Through this white paper, we will identify potential challenges in employing this standard and provide potential solutions for these challenges.

As radiology departments move closer to enterprise-wide electronic imaging systems, the importance of timely and accurate patient and exam information cannot be overstated. In addition, automated entry of patient and exam information into image acquisition modalities (e.g., computed radiography, CR) enhances technologist productivity, which is critical in high volume practices (e.g. a major trauma center). A difficulty arises, however, since the authoritative source of patient and exam information may be a Radiology Information System (RIS) or a Hospital Information System (HIS) packages its data differently than most imaging modalities. To bridge this gap, we have implemented an interface engine to affect the translation of Health Level Seven (HL7) messages from the RIS (or HIS) into Digital Imaging Communications In Medicine (DICOM) messages for seven CR systems (Fuji Medical Systems, Burbank, CA). Recent measurements suggest that manual technologist transcription of information into the CR unit takes 45.4 plus or minus 3.0 seconds. Since the introduction of the HL7/DICOM broker, the time has dropped to 5.4 plus or minus 0.1 seconds to produce the same information.