Project No.: 5003-045348 01.03.96 - 31.12.99

Project leader: Prof. Roger D. Hersch, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL)
e-mail: hersch@di.epfl.ch

Name of project: GigaServers: Advanced image and multimedia storage servers

Funding: Sfr 428,734.- (phase 2)

Partners:
Ronald Welz, WDS Technologies SA, Geneva
Dr. Luc Bidaut, Hôpital Cantonal Universitaire, Geneva
Dominique Pisino, ALP Electronics, Neuchâtel
Dr. Osman Ratib, Geneva
Heinrich Schneeberger, Swisscom Corporate Technology, Bern

Partial projects: 5003-045350 (Hersch), 5003-045353 (Ratib); integrated in present project since 01.03.1998

Summary:
More and more companies and organizations are faced with the need to provide information and services to external or in-house customers (WWW, Intranet) over a network. In the health sector, institutions like hospitals and insurance companies rely on information technologies for access to medical images and associated information. In such cases a relatively small number of services face a large number of clients wanting simultaneous access to data. The servers need large processing and storage capacities to retrieve the desired information from the extremely comprehensive data records in the required form.

The aim of the present project is to develop an all-purpose server with parallel image and multimedia storage facilities, based on off-the-shelf components (PCs) and a commercial operating system (Windows NT). The software architecture contains a framework capable of specifying parallel applications and compiling them in multi-PC programs.

The availability of broadband telecom channels makes high demands on server technology and applications. The new WWW standards (Java, ActiveX) call for a partial revision of the general image server architecture and applications software and the development of suitable user-friendly interface software. The goal of the continuation proposal is to design network-based interfaces for medical applications using standard libraries (OpenGL) and components (Java, ActiveX) to enable smooth interaction between the end-users and the servers.

Cooperation:
EPFL Laboratoire de Systèmes Périphériques (Prof. Roger D. Hersch),
Dr. Luc Bidaut of Hôpital Cantonal Universitaire, Geneva
Firma WDS Technologies SA (Geneva), Alp Electronics (Neuchâtel)
Swisscom.