Patent ID: 8719329

Claim:
An image communication system comprising: an imaging device that images a subject to generate electronic image data; and a plurality of servers capable of communicating with the imaging device through a network, wherein the imaging device includes an imaging unit that images a subject to generate electronic image data, an image file generating unit that generates an image file including first interpretation subject information interpreted by any one of the plurality of servers, the first interpretation subject information including at least one of the generated image data and a plurality of pieces of metadata associated with the image data and being interpreted by any one of a plurality of servers connected to each other through a network, and second interpretation subject information, the second interpretation subject information being different from the first interpretation subject information and including address information that has a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of a server capable of interpreting the first interpretation subject information in the network, and a communication unit that transmits the image file to the server with the address information based on the second interpretation subject information and receives the address information from a server capable of interpreting the first interpretation subject information, and wherein each of the servers includes an interpreting unit that interprets the first interpretation subject information included in the image file transmitted by the imaging device, a second communication unit that transmits a transmission request for format information for defining a format of the metadata to a server corresponding to the address information when the interpreting unit cannot interpret the first interpretation subject information, and receives the format information from at least one of the plurality of servers responding to the transmission request, and a database generating unit that generates a database of the first interpretation subject information interpreted based on the format information received by the second communication unit.