[Search] [Next story]

6 February 1997

Medical network pioneers live 3-D surgical images
Tokyo. The world's first live test transmissions of three-dimensional medical images of patients have been launched by Nagoya University in Japan and Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, in the United States, using a high- capacity trans-Pacific network.

The experiment is part of the Global Interoperability for Broadband Networks project set up by the G7 group of seven leading nations. Several 'telemedicine' projects already exist in Japan linking hospitals and medical research organizations. The Nagoya­Duke network uses a three-dimensional television system developed at Nagoya that allows reconstruction of stereoscopic images of structures in the human body.

According to Tomohiko Hattori of Nagoya University, who developed the system, several doctors can view the three-dimensional images at the same time. Doctors in Japan and the United States can use the network to exchange information about diagnostic and surgical techniques.

The international system is still in its experimental phase. But a telemedicine network developed at the National Cancer Centre in Tokyo is at a more advanced stage.

The national network began operating in April 1994 with a 6-megabit-per-second optical-fibre link between the Tokyo institute and a new campus of the cancer centre in Chiba, 30 km east of Tokyo. It allows transmission of still high-definition television images such as X-ray images and teleconferencing using the standard NTSC format used in US and Japanese televisions, as well as remote operation of a microscope at the cancer institute.

Six other Japanese cancer centres have since joined the network: the National Sapporo Hospital in the northern island of Hokkaido, Miyagi Prefectural Cancer Center north of Tokyo, Aichi Cancer Center near Nagoya, the National Kure Hospital near Hiroshima, the National Shikoku Cancer Center in the island of Shikoku, and the National Kyushu Cancer Center in the southern island of Kyushu.

Every week, a lecture-style teleconference is held between the centres to exchange information on diagnostic techniques and treatments for cancer.

About a dozen other medical research institutes, medical associations and hospitals have joined the network with lower capacity links (mainly 64 kilobits per second) allowing them to access databases at the cancer centre. And several more will join next month. In collaboration with Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT) and other telecommunications companies, the National Cancer Centre now has higher capacity 45-megabit and 156-megabit-per-second links between its two campuses.

There are also high-capacity links to the National Cardiovascular Centre in Osaka and the National Institute of Radiological Sciences in Chiba. The transmission of super-high-definition images is now being tested in collaboration with NTT.

Although the cancer centre's telemedicine network is widely used for clinical work, it is still funded as a research project by the Ministry of Health and Welfare on the grounds that it remains 'experimental' and does not come under the national health system.

But the ministry is planning to link 250 hospitals and medical organizations throughout Japan in March in a practical application of networking in medicine. This network, HOSPnet, will have an annual budget of ¥3 billion (US$24 million). It will initially have only fairly low-capacity links and most hospitals will use an Internet telephone system for communication rather than teleconferencing. But the ministry has ambitions to upgrade it to a telemedicine network.

David Swinbanks

[Back to top]

[Search] [Next story]

[News summaries] [Nature Home] [Feedback]

Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1997
Registered No. 785998 England.