Patent ID: 7958100

Claim:
A method of managing digital medical images, comprising: storing a plurality of digital medical images on a distributed plurality of Internet server computers using a unified system of globally unique identifiers corresponding to each of the stored digital medical images, the stored digital medical images corresponding to a plurality of image modalities and to a plurality of imaging device manufacturers; receiving over the Internet at a first one of the Internet server computers from a client computer an electronic request to view at least one of the stored digital medical images in a standard web browser, wherein the electronic request is a url comprising a globally unique identifier corresponding to the requested at least one of the digital medical images; determining by the first one of the Internet server computers if the requested at least one of the digital medical images is stored thereon; and if not, sending a response from the first one of the Internet server computers back to the client computer which, in turn, automatically and contemporaneously redirects the electronic request to a second one of the Internet server computers to locate the requested at least one of the digital medical images, the response comprising an Internet address of the second one of the Internet server computers for redirecting the electronic request to the second one of the Internet server computers; determining by the second one of the Internet server computers if the requested at least one of the digital medical images is stored thereon; and if not, repeating the steps of sending a response to the client computer comprising the Internet address of another of the Internet server computers, automatically redirecting the electronic request to another of the Internet server computers by the client computer and determining if the requested at least one of the digital medical images is stored thereon until the requested at least one of the digital medical images is located; and, upon locating the requested at least one of the digital medical images, sending over the Internet the requested at least one of the digital medical images from the storage one of the Internet server computers directly to the client computer, wherein each of the digital medical images has been converted without user input and without loss of diagnostic information from DICOM format to an image format which is compatible for display in a standard Internet web browser.