Method of controlling data gathered at remote locations

#The field of the invention is the field of business methods, applied in particular to the field of medical imaging.

#It is an object of the invention to provide a business method for providing security and confidentiality of data from imaging of tissue used for diagnosing medical conditions.

#It is an object of the invention to provide a method for collecting payment for diagnosing medical conditions from imaging of tissue.

#FIG. 1 is a flow chart of the method of the invention.

#Patents assigned to the assignee of the present invention describe in great detail systems which image biological tissue and teeth. In particular, the images may be automatically reduced to data sets, and the data sets used as a diagnosis tool to aid professional practitioners in diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions. In particular, US patent teaches a way to tell if a skin lesion is melanoma. The data sets from many lesions must be scanned and the results of biopsies of the lesions entered into a database to extract the predicting features from the data of any one image. Thus, the results of many expensive images and more expensive procedures and biopsies are vital to the business of producing and selling imaging systems. The data and algorithms for using the data may be stored in a computer in the location where the images are taken. However, such data are hard to keep confidential and vulnerable to misappropriation by unauthorized people. In addition, a business model where payment is made for each image processed is hard to enforce without an accurate count of images made, and the accurate count is subject to manipulation at a remote site.

#The following U.S. patent applications: U.S. application Ser. No. 08/778,001 filed Dec. 31, 1996 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,201,880 issued Mar. 13, 2001); U.S. application Ser. No. 09/031,929 filed Feb. 27, 1998 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,081,612 issued Jun. 27, 2000); U.S. application Ser. No. 09/032,450 Feb. 27, 1998 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,208,749 issued Mar. 27, 2001); U.S. application Ser. No. 09/467,344 filed Dec. 20, 1999 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,282,359 issued Aug. 28, 2001); U.S. application Ser. No. 09/467,345 filed Dec. 20, 1999; U.S. application Ser. No. 09/604,645 filed Jun. 27, 2000 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,307,957 issued Oct. 23, 2001); U.S. application Ser. No. 09/670,492 filed Sep. 26, 2000; U.S. application Ser. No. 09/722,248 filed Nov. 24, 2000 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,341,957 issued Jan. 29, 2002); U.S. application Ser. No. 09/944,248 filed Aug. 31, 2001; U.S. application Ser. No. 09/991,897 filed Nov. 23, 2001; and U.S. application Ser. No. 10/071,277 filed Feb. 8, 2002, are assigned to the assignee of the present invention and describe in great detail apparatus and methods for imaging and diagnosing of teeth and tissue. The above identified patents, patent applications, and references, including the references included therein, are included herein in their entirety by reference.

#The U.S. Pat. No. 6,081,612, noted above, describes in great detail how an image of a skin lesion may be treated to decide if the skin lesion is melanoma or if it is a look-alike nevus. The application describes how the image is generated in a number of spectral bands, how the image is segmented, and how the segmented images from each spectral band are used to generate a number of features. Some of these features, among others, are the ellipticity, blochiness, color, area, edge definition, etc. Each of the forgoing features may be reduced to a single number, and each may be used as a classifier to distinguish melanoma from look alike lesions.