Substantial effort and attention has been directed to increasing the capabilities of medical imaging systems, including continued research and development into new medical imaging modalities, the ongoing improvement of existing imaging modalities, and the expansion of data processing, presentation, and storage capabilities for ensuring the beneficial use of the acquired medical image data for the ultimate goal of improving overall patient health. One particularly crucial component of the medical imaging environment is the medical image review workstation, which is where all of the specially acquired and processed image information is presented to a radiologist so that critical health-related decisions can be made. As used herein, radiologist generically refers to a medical professional that analyzes medical images and makes clinical determinations therefrom, it being understood that such person or user of the review workstation might be titled differently, or might have differing qualifications, depending on the country or locality of their particular medical environment.
In association with the ongoing expansion of medical imaging, data processing, and data storage capabilities, an ever-increasing amount of information is becoming available to the radiologist at the medical image review workstation. Problems can arise, however, at the interface between (a) the amount of information available to the radiologist, and (b) the amount of information that can be usefully accessed and perceived by the radiologist in a reasonable amount of time. These issues are especially important in today's radiology environment, where there is an ongoing tension between providing high-quality detection/diagnosis for each patient and maintaining adequate patient throughput to keep costs under control. A large body of information associated with a patient's medical image data would have substantially diminished value if the radiologist does not have sufficient time, inclination, or information technology (IT) sophistication to properly view that information. It is therefore crucial that the human-machine interface associated with medical image review workstations be as streamlined, appealing, and user-friendly as possible, while also allowing comprehensive access to the large amount of data available.
In addition to human-machine interface capability issues, the ongoing expansion of medical imaging, data processing, and data storage capabilities brings about problems relating to equipment acquisition, maintenance, and upgrade costs for medical image review workstations. As known in the art, it is often the case that medical image review for a particular imaging modality is optimized by the use of an additional hardware user input device other than a conventional keyboard/mouse combination, such as a specialized keypad platform having particular arrangements of buttons, knobs, sliders, joysticks, trackballs, and so forth. Although streamlining the image review process for that particular workstation, these specialized hardware input devices can be disadvantageous in that they add to overall system cost, are usually limited to a single modality, and cannot be easily modified or upgraded. Thus, for example, if it is desired to upgrade to a new software version having different workflow controls, it may be necessary to replace the specialized keypad altogether. As another example, if it is desired to expand the capabilities of the medical image review workstation to include an additional modality (for example, adding an ultrasound review modality to an existing x-ray modality review workstation), then the cost and clutter of a second specialized hardware input device for that additional modality may become necessary.