Blockchain technology had its beginnings in the financial sector and is most commonly associated with cryptocurrencies, but it is also beginning to emerge as a significant player in the healthcare industry. A recent study published in the Journal of Digital Imaging explored the history of blockchain and examined its potential impact on the future of medical imaging technology.

Specifically within medical imaging, blockchain use cases include image sharing (including patient-driven/centered ownership of images), teleradiology, research, and machine learning/artificial intelligence applications, wrote authors Morgan P. McBee, MD, Medical University of South Carolina, and Chad Wilcox, MD, University of California Los Angeles. It is more practical to store hashes, metadataor references/links to images within the blockchain as opposed to images themselves as illustrated in one proposed blockchain implementation for sharing of images. This is especially true because of the slow speed and high cost of storing large amounts of data in a public blockchain.

There are, however, four key limitations McBee and Wilcox discussed in their assessment. Any researchers looking to learn more about blockchain should keep these limitations in mind at all times.

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4 limitations of blockchain technology every imaging researcher should know - AI in Healthcare