Patent ID: 8631096

Claim:
An imaging system, comprising: a processor executing computer readable code to: operate as a network characteristic measurement system for a network comprising a first viewing workstation, a second viewing workstation, a first server, and a second server, the network characteristic measurement system to estimate a value of at least one characteristic of the network corresponding to medical image information transfer from the first server to the first viewing workstation, the characteristic of the network comprising at least one of a network bandwidth value, a network bandwidth reliability, or an expected processing power at the viewing workstation; and transmit medical image information from the first server to the first viewing workstation, the medical image information to be transmitted in a selected transmission mode selected by the network characteristic measurement system from a plurality of transmission modes, the plurality of transmission modes organized in a hierarchy of transmission modes, each of the transmission modes being associated with a different threshold value of the at least one characteristic of the network, the selected transmission mode selected by comparing the value of the characteristic of the network to each of the threshold values, wherein the plurality of transmission modes comprises a first transmission mode that utilizes a native file format, a second transmission mode that utilizes lossless compression, a third transmission mode that utilizes an uncompressed region of interest (ROI), a fourth transmission mode that utilizes wavelet lossless compression, and a fifth transmission mode that utilizes wavelet lossless compression of an ROI; wherein when the first viewing workstation receives an input requesting the transfer of medical image information from the first server, the network characteristic measurement system requests the transmission of the medical image information from the first server across the network to the first viewing workstation in the selected transmission mode; and wherein the first server compresses the medical image information in accordance with the selected transmission mode, and transmits the compressed medical image information across the network to the first viewing workstation.