Patent ID: 8254649

Claim:
A medical image observation system, comprising: a report storage configured to store an interpretation report that at least includes patient-identifying information, examination-specifying information, and medical image-specifying information that specifies medical image data; a medical image storage configured to store the medical image data that includes image data and additional information regarding said image data that at least includes the patient-identifying information, the examination-specifying information, and the medical image-specifying information; a medical image data-specifying part configured to specify an interpretation report that includes patient-identifying information, based on said patient-identifying information specified by a display request for medical image data, and to specify the medical image data using the medical image-specifying information included in said specified interpretation report; a medical image data-reading part configured to read the medical image data from said medical image storage based on the additional information of said specified medical image data and the examination-specifying information specified by said display request; and a displaying part configured to display an image based on the image data included in said read medical image data, wherein said medical image storage is configured to receive, as a series, a plurality of sets of tomographic image data acquired along an arbitrary direction, and to store the plurality of sets of said tomographic image data so that the image-generating conditions that show the conditions under which said tomographic image data has been generated are included in said additional information, the image generating conditions including cross-sectional position information, directional information, and thickness information; and said medical image storage is configured to store said medical image data so that the image-generating conditions that show the conditions under which said image data has been generated are included in said additional information, said medical image data-reading part including an image-generating condition-extracting part configured to extract the image-generating conditions from the additional information of said specified medical image data; and an image-generator configured to read, from said medical image storage, the plurality of sets of tomographic image data included in the series specified, based on the patient-identifying information and the examination-specifying information specified by said display request, so as to generate new medical image data by performing image processing on the plurality of sets of the read tomographic image data included in said read medical image data according to the cross-sectional position information, the directional information, and the thickness information indicated by said extracted image-generating conditions; and said displaying part is configured to display the image based on the image data included in said new medical image data.