Filed under: Multimedia, Software, Internet Tools, Open Source
Open source medical imaging software for iPods
Slashdot is pointing to a CNN article on Osirix, an open source image viewer for iPods (and Macs). Medical images are, by necessity, incredibly large. The big GB count on iPods seemed a perfect match for storing these images... Normally the story would end there. But you have to ask why would someone store pictures on an iPod instead of a USB drive? Wouldn't that be cheaper?Well that sums up the entire PC industry, doesn't it? It's cheaper to build an AMD Windows box, after all. But the developers of Osirix have decided to make more than just a simple transport device. Osirix takes DICOM images (the format of medical imagery), and manages to squeeze them into an iPod, for viewing on a Mac or iPod (photo and up). In addition to that simple task, they've integrated iChat into the viewer, so doctors can collaborate online. Add to that privacy controls, optimization for the new quad-G5's, plug-in capabilities, and XGrid support. Plus, when you're done saving lives you can listen to music.
Osirix is inspiring in their use and implementation of Apple's tools, and as developers. Which might explain why Osirix won a 2005 Apple Design Award for Best Mac OS X Open Source Product. If you have a hard time selling management, be sure to find the killer Keynote presentation that'll pitch the boss man for you.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
froopyloot said 4:46PM on 10-27-2005
This is actually a program I have used. I'm not int he medical field. My wife had to have a cranial MRI (she's ok now) and we both wanted to look at the pictures. The RadTech burned us an image disk (for $10 bucks! These folks will do anything for a buck!) I brought it home and didn't know how to look at it. A quick websearch brought me to Osirix and a few miniutes later I was constructing 3-D views of my wife's brain. This program is easy to use for anyone. If I can use it, anyone can. It is intuitive, mac-like and hours of fun. My wife's doctor didn't have anything at all like this for the PC. I brought in in on my iBook and demonstrated it to her. She asked what the price of the software was. A few weeks later she's running an all mac shop. This is a killer app for the docs.
~m
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Navypoo said 5:27PM on 10-27-2005
Osirix is a fun a program just to piddle around with. You can find free sample DICOM images online.
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Ruan Caiman said 12:11AM on 10-28-2005
Was anyone else confused by the CNN article? This bit in particular is what seems to have the right iPod buzzword, but is pretty vague:
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Instead of the usual jpeg format, medical images are stored in a format called Diacom (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) so we had to create a function on the software that allowed the format to be modified so they could be visible on the iPod.
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Does that just mean Osirix exports to JPEG before they move the images to the iPod? Or does it mean they rewrote image viewing software on the iPod to view actual DICOM images? Either would be interesting, although the latter would be more impressive.
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