The telemedicine benchmark: a general tool to measure and compare the performance of videoconferencing equipment in the telemedicine area.

In this paper, we describe the ‘Telemedicine Benchmark’ (TMB), which is a set of standard procedures, protocols and measurements to test reliability and levels of performance of data exchange in a telemedicine session. We have put special emphasis on medical imaging, i.e. digital image transfer, joint viewing and editing and 3D manipulation. With the TMB, we can compare the aptitude of different video conferencing software systems for telemedicine issues and the effect of different network technologies (ISDN, xDSL, ATM, Ethernet). The evaluation criteria used are length of delays and functionality. For the application of the TMB, a data set containing radiological images and medical reports was set up. Considering the Benchmark protocol, this data set has to be exchanged between the partners of the session. The Benchmark covers file transfer, whiteboard usage, application sharing and volume data analysis and compression. The TMB has proven to be a useful tool in several evaluation issues