Image management in PACS: How should they be decomposed into well-defined and interoperable industrial products ?

We consider that no consensus currently exists on how PACS should be decomposed into well-defined and interoperable industrial products. We believe that this lack of consensus hampers the development of multi-vendor PACS and makes the standardization process slower. This paper tries to understand the ins and outs of these choices. To realize this we have used the MIMOSA functional model (EurlPACS project) as a reference model. We have then delineated the borders between several possible industrial products in the fields of work flow management and management of image availability. We have compared these solutions from several perspectives, including the manufacturers' strategy, the users' strategy and the standardization.