All treatment-relevant information
in one place – for the tumor board
Treating complex head and neck tumors is one of the most demanding tasks in oncology:
numerous medical disciplines – from ENT through radiology and pathology to radiation therapy –
must bring their findings together in the tumor board. In today's clinics, however, this information
is frequently scattered across separate, unconnected systems.
This is precisely where OncoControl comes in: its central aim is to raise the quality of oncological
treatment decisions and to improve existing workflow and treatment processes.
All treatment-relevant information is stored in a shared database and made available to the
physician in a structured, clearly arranged form via a clinic-wide accessible, system-independent
web interface. Consolidating everything into a single system is the essential
innovation compared with the previously fragmented information landscape.
Interactive image reporting in the browser
A central, innovative project goal was to integrate interactive 2D and 3D graphics directly into
the web interface – with the ability to annotate the data immediately. Alongside the
conventional cross-sectional images from CT and MRI, endoscopy images and interactive
3D reconstructions are thus also available, helping specialists with diagnostic and treatment questions as well as with
documenting and communicating their decisions.
For marking relevant features and structures, deliberately simple
web technologies have proven effective; they are integrated directly into the image data and
assigned to the respective patient. Multiple users can access the image data independently of the
system – from PC to smartphone – explore it interactively almost in real time, and discuss it directly with colleagues
and experts.
Contributions by Dornheim Medical Images
Dornheim developed the base framework with a unified user interface, the
communication interfaces for authenticated data exchange with the clinic's information systems,
and the image-based assistance functions – from web-technology-based 3D reconstruction
to the interactive annotation and measurement tools. This work was built on
a collection of extensive patient data compiled during the project, which was used to research the methods
and to evaluate the concepts and prototypes.
