Microsoft: How to keep up with the exponential increase in medical imaging data

Like health organizations everywhere, Austin Radiological Association (ARA) faced an ever-increasing need for medical imaging data storage.

ARA uses some of the most advanced technologies out there for diagnostic imaging from mammography to MRIs. And as image quality goes up, so do file sizes. For example, in late 2014 ARA moved from 2D to 3D breast imaging—and file sizes increased by about 20 times. The average file size for a standard mammography image: 19MB; the average file size for a 3D tomography image: 392MB. As a result, ARA projected that by 2024 it would have 3 petabytes of data annually just from its 3D breast imaging files.

It was becoming increasingly difficult for ARA to keep up with this type of dramatic data growth. The IT team kept having to ask for more capital to spend on storage—to buy hardware and manage the ever-growing storage infrastructure.

So after looking into many solutions, ARA decided to go with a cloud solution from Nasuni powered by Microsoft Azure. It’s helping it scale data storage at lower costs—with the right security and redundancy.