Patent ID: 7844571

Claim:
A method for managing medical image data in a data network including a multiplicity of network nodes, the method comprising: a first management process for buffer-storing the image data, in which the respective image data are stored at a network node provided as a buffer store; a second management process for archiving the image data, in which the respective image data are transmitted from the buffer store to a network node provided as an archive store and are stored in this archive store, where the storage of the respective image data in the buffer store and in the archive store involves a reference to the respective network node being recorded in an index in conjunction with an explicit identifier for the respective image data; and a third management process for loading the image data, in which the index is used to ascertain the at least one network node at which the respective image data are stored, and the respective image data are loaded from this at least one network node, wherein the first management process and the second management process record separate indices for the buffer store and the archive store, the third management process is capable of sending loading requests to both the buffer store and the archive store using the separate indices, and index data are interchanged between the index for the buffer store and the index for the archive store to synchronize the indices.