The short answer: Xray/CT images are handled extremely well when in PCoIP mode (the Samsung 930ND supports RDP and PCoIP).
The long answer:
PC-over-IP supports all graphics and full display frame rates (DVI supports up to 60frames per second). Briefly, PCoIP bridges the user desktop over standard IP networks. There are no special drivers in the remoted PC and there are no drivers in the desktop appliance. Essentially, PCoIP compresses the user display and sends over IP to a dumb and stateless appliance on the desk (ie the Samsung display). USB and HD audio are transparently bridged over the network as well for a full desktop experience for the user. In most cases, the user cannot tell that their PC/workstation is not at their desk anymore, but is somewhere back in a datacenter. So Xray/CT image data never leaves the datacenter - only a compressed and encrypted image of the XRay/CT image. This saves a lot of bandwidth by not sending the large image files themselves and is very secure.
A key feature for medical applications is the ability for PCoIP to support progressive image refinement that builds to a fully lossless image. In a constrained network environment (ie WAN) PCoIP will get a highly compressed image to the user quickly then builds the image to an exact replica of the source.
The benefit is that a radiologist could flip through CT scan slices very quickly and then know that as soon as the image stops moving it is an exact replica of the source. There are ways to configure a "direct-to-loss-less" mode that ensures the image is always lossless even when the images are in motion - this mode takes more network bandwidth.
Teradici has worked with a Heathcare provider to test PCoIP in a radiologist workstation for MRI/CT scans - these tests were very successful. Here is a link to EVGA's site for the PCoIP kit that we used in the workstation:
http://www.evga.com/articles/00448/default.asp
You may be interested in the unique USB security - a key reason why PCoIP was deployed at various government security agencies. Here is a video demo on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amv_6OemfD4
To your earlier point, there are a variety of datacenter PC hardware, some more dense than others:
Rack workstations - extreme compute performance, any graphics cards etc (Dell R5400)
Blade workstations, blade PC's - up to extreme PC performance, but typically mobile graphics (IBM HC10, Verari Connexxus and Clearcube I9400)
Virtualized Servers - highest density with scalable user performance. Teradici licensed PCoIP to VMware (
http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/teradici_vmworld08.html) for use in their upcoming VMware View products (VMware's new name for VDI).
A range of equipment in the datacenter would enable highly dense servers for nursing stations (delivered via RDP or in future VMware View with Software PCoIP) and extreme workstations for radiologist machines (delivered via hardware-accelerated PCoIP). Any PCoIP enabled desktop appliance could be used to dynamically access a range of compute resources in the datacenter via free-seating. So a radiologist could take over the station briefly to view a scan and when the nurse logs back in their session would come back instantly.
If you would like to contact me directly my email is
srobinson@teradici.com.