Compressed transfer of images between PacsOne servers
It would be nice to save bandwith with transferring images from one PacsOne setup to another using some lossless compression scheme.
Currently PacsOne Server transfer the images using the same transfer syntax in which the images are encoded, so if the images are already compressed in any lossless compression transfer syntax, they will be transferred in the same lossless transfer syntax which will save network bandwidth.
For PacsOne to always transfer images using lossless transfer syntax, it would require PacsOne to convert from the original transfer syntax into this lossless transfer syntax, which has the following implications:
1. Technically, the converted images are no longer the same as the originals as they are re-encoded in the new transfer syntax during the conversion. For images encoded in some transfer syntaxes (e.g., the Dicom default Implicit VR Little-Endian transfer syntax), such conversion would lose any private data element in the original images. This may be a problem especially for input modalities from many big-name vendors such as GE, Siemens, etc., which are known to write a lot of private data elements into the images they create. If PacsOne always performs such conversion of transfer syntax, these systems will most likely complain when the converted images are sent back to them since all of the private data elements will no longer be present.
2. The conversion of transfer syntax requires more CPU time, which should be ok since the increase in CPU time should be much less than the decrease in network transfer time, given that the CPU is becoming more powerful faster than the growth in network bandwidth.
What we may be able to do is to implement this conversion as a configurable option for a future version of PacsOne Server, so that users can always choose what's best for their sites.
For PacsOne to always transfer images using lossless transfer syntax, it would require PacsOne to convert from the original transfer syntax into this lossless transfer syntax, which has the following implications:
1. Technically, the converted images are no longer the same as the originals as they are re-encoded in the new transfer syntax during the conversion. For images encoded in some transfer syntaxes (e.g., the Dicom default Implicit VR Little-Endian transfer syntax), such conversion would lose any private data element in the original images. This may be a problem especially for input modalities from many big-name vendors such as GE, Siemens, etc., which are known to write a lot of private data elements into the images they create. If PacsOne always performs such conversion of transfer syntax, these systems will most likely complain when the converted images are sent back to them since all of the private data elements will no longer be present.
2. The conversion of transfer syntax requires more CPU time, which should be ok since the increase in CPU time should be much less than the decrease in network transfer time, given that the CPU is becoming more powerful faster than the growth in network bandwidth.
What we may be able to do is to implement this conversion as a configurable option for a future version of PacsOne Server, so that users can always choose what's best for their sites.