MIRC
Medical Imaging
Resource Center
A Tour of the MIRC Community
Rex Jakobovits, PhD
Affiliate Professor, University of Washington
President, Vivalog Technologies*
*Vivalog is a provider of commercial teaching file solutions
Slides contributed by John Perry and Rodney Shaffer
The Objective:
Support the production, storage,
indexing and distribution of
medical imaging resources:
– Teaching files
– Scientific & technical documentation
– Research images & datasets
– Clinical trials data
Approach:
• Enable a virtual community
– of medical image libraries
– with a distributed index
– supporting a distributed search
mechanism
• Peer-to-peer sharing, like Napster
MIRC
An open community of medical
imaging libraries and teaching
files around the world,
cooperating by sharing
information through a common
query format
Searching Imaging Resources,
B.M. (Before MIRC)
• Google
– Unstructured, free text
• No way to specify “give me chest
x-rays on male patients with
pneumonia”
– Hit and miss, inconsistent results
• No way to say “just give me teaching
files, not random web pages”
Searching Imaging Resources,
B.M. (Before MIRC)
• Browse isolated collections
– No way to query across systems
– Need to learn heterogeneous
query interfaces
– Results not aggregated
Searching Image Resources,
A.M. (Age of MIRC)
• A unified query interface
– Structured querying across
multiple repositories
– Results aggregated in a case
browser
– Control over how results are
displayed
• http://mirc.rsna.org
How does it work?
• MIRC committee defined some
important standards:
– MIRCDocument Schema
– MIRCQuery Schema
• Each repository can participate as
a MIRC Storage Service,
responding to queries from any
MIRC Query Service
MIRC Sites
MIRC site A
User
Query
Service
Index
Server
RSNA site
Internet
Index
MIRC site B
Index
Index
Server
Server
Server
MIRC site C
MIRC – a technical definition
• MIRC is defined to be a set of
servers (query services and
storage services) that support:
– the MIRCquery and
– MIRCqueryresult XML schemas
• MIRC places no constraints on
how servers display their contents
Query Services
• Provide users with query forms.
• Translate a query form into a
MIRCquery XML object.
• Distribute the MIRCquery to all
selected Storage Services.
• Collate the results and return
them to the user.
Storage Services
• Respond to queries from
Query Services and serve
content to users.
• Each storage service
maintains its own index
• Each storage service is
responsible for the display
format of its content
Casimage Case Display
MedPix Case Display
MyPACS.net Case Display
Neuroscience Institute Display
RSNA Case Display
Unknown Query
• Can use for teaching cases
– Resident board preparation
– Test skills in a specific modality or
organ system
Unknown Query
Unknown Query Result
Unknown Query Result
How can I participate in MIRC?
1. Create cases using a free
web-based MIRC teaching
file authoring system
•
MyPACS.net, Medpix, etc.
Adding Images to a Case
How can I participate in MIRC?
1. Create cases using a free
web-based MIRC teaching
file authoring system
2. Create MircDocuments with
the free RSNA MIRCat, and
upload them to a MIRC
storage provider
MIRCat – the Editor pane
MIRCat – the Display pane
MIRCat – the ACR code pane
MIRCat – the Palette
The Image Editor
MIRCat – the Selector
MIRCat – DICOM Q/R
MIRCat – DICOM Store
Case
submission
The Finished Product
How can I participate in MIRC?
1. Create cases using a free
web-based MIRC teaching
file authoring system
2. Create MircDocuments with
the free RSNA MIRCat, and
upload them to a MIRC
storage provider
3. Become a MIRC Storage
Provider
The RSNA MIRC Software
• Query Service
• Storage Service
Storage Service servlet
Submit Service servlet
Admin Service servlet
XML Server servlet
The RSNA MIRC Site Software
• Serves all kinds of MIRC
documents
• Runs on all platforms
• Personal/departmental teaching
file system
• Clinical trials support coming
soon
• Free / open source
MIRC as a data exchange
format
• We use MIRCDocument
standard for publishing cases
to MyPACS.net from other
applications
Customer
Server
PACS
Partner
MyPACS.net
RadPix
Working with a MIRC Solutions
Provider
• Vivalog Technologies,
providing added-value MIRCenabled solutions
Questions/Answers & Help
• RSNA Forums:
– http://forums.rsna.org
– User Comments, Questions and Answers
– RSNA MIRC Software Announcements
– MIRC Implementers’ Corner
– MIRC Technical Review Committee
• Subscribe on the Forums site
Other Courses This Week
• How to Author MIRC
Teaching File Documents
• How to Set Up a Personal
Teaching File System
• Inside the RSNA MIRC
Software