Pediatric Radiology (juillet 2011)

Pediatric Radiology* (2011) 41:826–831

Paediatric radiology seen from Africa. Part I: providing diagnostic imaging to a young population Savvas Andronikou, Kieran McHugh, Nuraan Abdurahman, Bryan Khoury and Victor Mngomezulu, et al.

….More complex solutions are also beginning to emerge. A tele-US system for real-time imaging in resource-limited settings is now possible [43]. Using open-source software and commercial off-the-shelf hardware, a remote US technician can be connected to a radiologist. Another recent initiative has been Téléradiologie sans Frontières (TSF; Teleradiology without Borders), a Luxembourg-based enterprise involving expert radiologists and high-end technology based on a Power Server PACS system developed and donated by RamSoft [44]. Using a standard computer, users log on to WEB-PACS over the Internet. Images are transmitted to the data centre at the push of a button, and radiologists interpret images sent to them. Everything is stored centrally, and available online. If a computer is lost or damaged, it is easy to recover the images with any other computer using a web browser. Thanks to TSF’s WEB-PACS, large files need no longer be split. The PACS enables the smooth transmission of large files that upload in the background, often while readers are completing their normal workload. This also helps to avoid the disadvantages of hardcopy storage and retrieval, which is time- and space-consuming (Fig. 6). Plain radiographs can also be photographed and recreated in JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) format [45, 46]. JPEG images can then be converted into DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine) format; a PACS conversion facility is essential to the process. There is no charge for the remote reading service, which is currently available in parts of Francophone Africa. Established private teleradiology practices such as Nighthawks are also involved in pilot programs with NGOs reporting radiographs from rural health centres, free of charge [47]…(read more)

* This is the official journal of the European Society of Paediatric Radiology, the Society for Pediatric Radiology, the Asian and Oceanic Society for Pediatric Radiology, and the Latin American Society of Pediatric Radiology.