Telemedicine - 16 sec. Current technology does not support a cost-effective solution which will support such data rates and quality of service requirements over wide area networks. Description Echocardiography is a medical imaging technique using high frequency ultrasound that generates full motion, full color video. It provides anatomic information on cardiac structure and shows blood flow throughout the cardiovascular system. Remote expert interpretation of digital EC would be beneficial when immediate interpretation is required by the cardiologist, when the person on the remote end must provide coaching or guidance to the person acquiring the echocardiographic image, and during real-time guidance for acquisition of echocardiographic images during manned space flight.
Digital transmission is essential both for science and for crew health.
This information is needed to ascertain the feasibility of using medical imaging technologies on manned, deep-space missions where both bandwidth and transmission power will be at a premium and prone to noisy channel conditions. Except for medical emergencies, a nominal data rate of less than 10 Mbps is much more realistic. Images were obtained from a volunteer. An echocardiographic unit was interfaced to an MPEG-2 encoder providing digital output to an ATM switch interface operating at incremental rates from 1 to 15 Mbps. Echocardiographic images were transmitted at a compression ratio and channel quality of service unknown to the remote observer.