Most medical imaging centers have now completed or are completing the transition to digital technologies.
This means digital acquisition modalities, digital image files instead of films, diagnostic viewing workstations
instead of lightboxes and reading rooms.
The central node of this fully-digital workflow is the PACS (Picture Archiving and Communcations System), a
system which is able to receive digital images from modalities and workstations through the DICOM protocol,
to archive them, to send them to other DICOM entities, to answer to queries for studies by other network nodes,
to produce portable media containing the digital images.
