Alternative videoconferencing technologies for providing telemedicine via the Internet are described. Background information about how digital video applications have been instantiated using Internet protocols is presented. Specific methods for encoding and decoding video are discussed and video applications that have been tested at the National Library of Medicine are reviewed. This article suggests that no one technology is best and that the appropriateness of a method depends on specific applications. Some technologies, however, have lower, more flexible bandwidth requirements and are more standardized, making them more practical. Still, emerging, yet-to-be-standardized applications offer new capabilities warranting further investigation.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
HershWR, HickamDH, SeveranceSM, DanaTL, KragesKP, HelfandM. Telemedicine for the Medicare Population: Update. Evidence Report/Technology Assessment No. 131 (Prepared by the Oregon Evidence-based Practice Center under Contract No. 290-02-0024.) AHRQ Publication No. 06-E007. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2006.
2.
HershWR, WallaceJA, PattersonPKet al.Telemedicine for the Medicare Program. Evidence Report/Technology Assessment No. 24 (Prepared by Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, OR under Contract No. 290-97-0018). AHRQ Publication No. 01-E012. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. 2001.
3.
ThomasW, GaryJS, GisleB, AjayL. Overview of the H.264/AVC video coding standard. IEEE Trans Circuits Syst Video Technol, 2003; 13:560–576.
4.
LakshmananS, VenkadachalamS. Integrated proactive admission control technique for both UDP and TCP traffic flows. J Netw, 2007; 2:1–8.
5.
CarlosASO, PanosMP. A survey of combinatorial optimization problems in multicast routing. Comput Oper Res, 2005; 32:1953–1981.
6.
HaifengQ, YuanZ, ZhibinL, ZechengW, BingZ. Efficient public key encryption with smallest ciphertext expansion from factoring. Des Codes Cryptogr, 2008; 49:233–249.
Draft ITU-T recommendation and final draft international standard of joint video specification (ITU-T Rec). H.264/ISO/IEC 14 496-10 AVC, in Joint Video Team (JVT) of ISO/IEC MPEG and ITU-T VCEG, JVT- G050. 20028th Meeting, Geneva, Switzerland, May 23–27, 2003.
9.
Hung-JenY, Hsiao-ChihL, Yeong-DiannW, Lung-HsingK. Designing and constructing live streaming system for broadcast. Proceedings of the 2010 American Conference on Applied Mathematics, 2010; 1:266–271.
10.
Video Codec for Audiovisual Services at px64 kbit/s ITU-T Recommendation H.261, Version 1, ITU-T, ITU-T Recommendation H.261 Version 1. 1988. International Telecommunications Union: Geneva, Switzerland.
11.
Video Coding for Low Bit Rate Communication, ITU-T, ITU-T Recommendation H.263 version 1. 2005. International Telecommunications Union: Geneva, Switzerland.
12.
ZhiZ, ShijunS, ShawaminL, Ming-TingS. Motion information and coding mode reuse for MPEG-2 to H.264 transcoding. IEEE Int Symp Circ Syst, 2005; 2:1230–1233.
13.
Apple, Inc. Technology Brief, QuickTime and MPEG-4: Now Featuring H.264 [Internet]http://images.apple.com/br/quicktime/pdf/H264_Technology_brief.pdf. 2010 September 6
14.
AkimichiO, KatsushiK, KazunoriS, OsamuN, JunM. Design and implementation of DV based video over RTP. 2000. Keio University: Japan.
15.
GlasmannJ, KellererW, MullerH. Service architectures in H.323 and SIP: A comparison. Commun Surv Tutorials IEEE, 2003; 5:32–47.
16.
ObraczkaK. Multicast transport mechanisms: A survey and taxonomy. IEEE Commun Mag, 1998; 36:94–102.
17.
McCanneS, JacobsonV. Vic: A flexible framework for packet video. Proceedings of the Third ACM International Conference on Multimedia, 1995; 1:511–522.
18.
HardmanV, SasseMA, KouvelasI. Successful multiparty audio communication over the Internet. Commun ACM, 1998; 41:74–80.
SilversteinJC, DechF, BinnsJ, JonesD, PapkaME, StevensR. Distributed collaborative radiological visualization using Access Grid. Stud Health Technol Inform, 2005; 111:477–481.
21.
NeedhamT. ConferenceXP and advanced collaborative scenarios. Int Symp Collab Technol Syst, 2006; 1:392.
22.
OgawaA, KobayashiK, SugiuraK, NakamuraO, MuraiJ. Design and implementation of DV based video over RTP. Packet Video Workshop: Sardinia, Italy, 2000.
23.
LeeJ, ImH, ChonK. High-definition digital video over IP: System design, experiments and applications. Proceedings of the APAN Network Research Workshop: Cairns, Australia, 2004.
24.
iHDTV project, ResearchChannel [Internet]. http://ihdtv.sourceforge.net/. 2010 October 15.
