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Focus in this paper is architecture of the computer system, i.e.how that system is designed in terms of interactions between largebuilding blocks. This is a technology perspective. System architectureis not that visible to the radiological user, in contrast to theuser interface. Moreover, whereas evolutions in the user interfaceclearly are of immediate concern to any radiologist [1], the samecan hardly be claimed for system architecture. However, architectureof the overall system has an important impact on functionalityand cost, especially for large, complex systems. Radiologists, and inparticular decision makers, should have at least a basic understandingof PACS architecture, and in particular of the consequences ofarchitectural choices.There is no inherently good or bad architecture for a computersystem. Design choices are determined by requirements as well astechnological possibilities. Both have changed since the introductionof large-scale PACS.Technological progress has been steady over the last decades.In many areas of computer industry, capacity or power doublesroughly every 18 months. This observation is informally referred toas Moore’s law. This is literally an exponential increase in power,or about a factor of 100 after a decade. General belief is that thislaw will remain valid for many years to come – in fact, this expectationitself and the resulting drive from marketing and productdevelopment already help sustain the trend.An area in which technological progress has enabled fundamentallynew radiological applications at a large scale, is teleradiology.That topic is covered elsewhere in this issue. For in-hospital PACS,advances such as faster and more ubiquitous computers, faster inhousenetworks or cheaper storage were no absolute requirement.It may therefore seem that these advances will “only” enable us tobuild faster, more functional and less expensive systems. However,even for the more traditional aspects of PACS the consequences aremore profound.Firstly, whereas PACS used to require state of the art technology,it can now do with the same hardware used by the other informationsystems in the hospital. A PACS increasingly becomes asoftware application. There is no convincing reason anymore forthat application not to use the standard hardware the hospital haschosen within its overall IT strategy. And that IT strategy will only toa limited extent be influenced by PACS.Wecome back to this observationthroughout the different sections in this paper. Secondly, thistechnological progress sets the scene fornewexpectations andnewrequirements in PACS, which become driving factors for the design.In this paper we discuss a few of those.A first influencing factor is the shift of storage needs to applicationsoutside radiology. PACS no longer is the single applicationthat requires huge amounts of storage. This favors an approach inwhich storage is provided centrally and the PACS has to adapt tothe overall storage policy.A second factor we discuss is that a growing number of departmentsstart to routinely acquire and use digital images.
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