As medical imaging continues to grow in popularity across a range of departments, the massive amounts of digital content created are generally managed in picture archiving and communications systems (PACS). Departmental PACS usually come with their own storage solution - which is generally whatever limited choice the vendor provides. This means that each department has its own PACS and storage system.

One approach to avoiding this IT nightmare of a potential six or more PACS with individual, different storage solutions, is the rather new concept of the vendor-neutral archive (VNA). This way, image data from multiple departments can be consolidated and managed in one storage solution, replacing the multiple archives of departmental PACS.

Access this paper to learn about VNAs and the major improvements they can bring to image data repositories, and explore a scale-out solution designed to provide a simple, predictable and manageable path from PACS to VNA.