Medical Image Retrieval System in Grid using Hadoop Framework

In the last few years there has been tremendous increase in the storage and processing of data, with significant speed and storage space requirements. Medical image storage and retrieval is one such application which requires huge storage space and not easily solved by computers. The researchers who work in the area of medical image processing deal with a high degree of storage and retrieval of medical images. Digitizing medical images and computer based image retrieval replaces the use of hard copies and provides efficient remote access. The proposed grid architecture implemented in this work uses Apache Hadoop framework. Hadoop is an open source grid architecture, complies with various image formats and can be established among various hospitals to store, share and retrieve images. Various performance metrics such as reliability, accuracy, interoperability, confidentiality and security are improved as with the use of Hadoop. The user authentication and patient confidentiality is also achieved. In this work, texture based Content Based Image Retrieval (CBIR) algorithm is used for efficient image retrieval. The performance of the proposed image retrieval system using Hadoop is tested with three current operative nodes. Experimental results obtained show that the retrieval time of the proposed system, Hadoop-CBIR, is considerably less with large number of images in the database.