Patent ID: 11961606
Assignee: BLACKFORD ANALYSIS LTD.
Field: Medical technology (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC G  H

Claim 0:
1. A computer-implemented method of reducing network traffic in a communication network configured to process a plurality of medical images using a plurality of clinical software applications, the method comprising:
receiving, using a network device from a first image system in the plurality of medical image systems, an initial portion of a current study collected by an image acquisition device, the initial portion comprising first image series metadata, wherein the first image series metadata is collected at a first image series collection event by the image acquisition device, and wherein a transmission size of the first image series metadata is less than a transmission size of image data associated with the initial portion, and wherein the first image series metadata of the initial portion is separate from the image data associated with the initial portion;
determining, by a processor in communication with the network device, that the collection of the current study at the image acquisition device is in progress based on the first image series metadata;
receiving, using the network device from the first image system in the plurality of medical image systems, a subsequent portion of the current study comprising second image series metadata corresponding to the current study, wherein the second image series metadata is collected at a subsequent image series collection event by the image acquisition device, wherein the first image series collection event occurs before the subsequent image series collection event, and wherein a transmission size of the second image series metadata is less than a transmission size of image data associated with the subsequent portion, and wherein the second image series metadata of the subsequent portion is separate from the image data associated with the subsequent portion;
applying, at the processor, one or more relevancy matching rules associated with the plurality of clinical software applications to the current study, the current study comprising current study metadata, to determine if the current study is a matched current study and to determine a matching clinical software application in the plurality of clinical software applications in lieu of a comparison between image data associated with the matched current study;
retrieving, using the network device, the image data corresponding to the matched current study;
generating, by the processor, an assembled study set comprising the matched current study, and the image data corresponding to the matched current study;
generating, by the processor, a metadata-based comparison for determining that the current study is completely assembled by comparing the first image series metadata collected at the first image series collection event and the second image series metadata collected at the subsequent image series collection event in lieu of a comparison between image data associated with the first image series and image data associated with the second image series;
determining, by the processor, that the current study is completely assembled based on the metadata-based comparison of the first image series metadata collected at the first image series collection event and the second image series metadata collected at the subsequent image series collection event;
processing, by the processor, based on the determining that the current study is completely assembled, the assembled study set using the matching clinical software application to generate a processed study comprising clinical information about the current study based on the completed assembled study; and
sending, by the network device, to the first image system, the processed study based on the assembled study set.