The In Vivo Imaging Middleware (IVIM) are a series of services and extensions to the caGrid middleware tools. IVIM includes a DICOM data service for grid based access to DICOM PACS , an AIM data service to store AIM annotations and a generic image data service to store generic image data types. These services allow a user to query, retrieve and submit. IVIM also includes VirtualPACS, a grid client application for the DICOMDataService. VirtualPACS appears as a PACS server to a radiologists DICOM workstation and acts as a middleman that allows the workstation to interact with DICOM grid services.

Features

1. DICOM Data Service: A caGrid data service that uses the NCIA DICOM data model to provide a caGrid query/retrieve/submit interface to a PACS
2. VirtualPACS: A client side application that allows DICOM workstations to interact with grid services that expose data using the NCIA DICOM data model. Currently it supports the DICOM Data Service and will soon support the NCIA Grid Service
3. AIM Data Service: A caGrid data service that uses the AIM data model to provide a caGrid query/retrieve/submit interface to an XML database that stores AIM objects
4. Image Data Service: A caGrid data service that allows grid clients to query/retrieve/submit generic image files stored on the file system
5. Introduce Extensions: A series of extensions to the caGrid Introduce toolkit and helper classes that allow developers to interface with IVIM grid services.
6. Security Extensions: A role based data access control mechanism to control the query and retrieval of objects exposed by the DICOM Data Service. It leverages the hierarchy in DICOM information model.
7. Federated Query Processor/Client: Allows queries across multiple information model. for eg. by using the FQP client, a user can formulate queries that encompass both DICOM and AIM attributes and execute this query to retrieve all DICOM and AIM objects that satisfy the query. The query is executed on a federation of multiple grid services.