Background: Live transmission of echocardiograms over integrated services digital network lines is accurate and has led to improvements in the delivery of pediatric cardiology care. Permanent archiving of the live studies has not previously been reported. Specific obstacles to permanent storage of telemedicine files have included the ability to produce accurate images without a significant increase in storage requirements.
Objective: We evaluated the accuracy of Motion Pictures Expert Group (MPEG) digitization of incoming video streams and assessed the storage requirements of these files for infants in a real-time pediatric tele-echocardiography program.
Results: All major cardiac diagnoses were correctly diagnosed by review of MPEG images. MPEG file size ranged from 11.1 to 182 MB (56.5 +/- 29.9 MB).
Conclusions: MPEG digitization during live neonatal telemedicine is accurate and provides an efficient method for storage. This modality has acceptable storage requirements; file sizes are comparable to other digital modalities.