1. Scope and who we are

PACS-AI is a research platform for running artificial-intelligence models on medical images inside a hospital's existing picture archiving and communication system (PACS). It is developed by the HeartWise AI Laboratory at the Montreal Heart Institute, Université de Montréal, with partners of the Integrated AI for Health Imaging (IAI4HI) network supported by CIFAR.

These Terms apply to the website, the public demonstration environment and the open-source software published on GitHub. Where a hospital or research institution operates its own installation, its own policies, research ethics approvals and agreements with HeartWise take precedence over these Terms for that installation.

2. Research use only. Not a medical device

PACS-AI and the AI models made available through it are provided for research, evaluation and educational purposes only. They have not been approved or cleared by Health Canada, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or any other regulator as a medical device, unless a specific model states otherwise in its Model Facts label.

Outputs produced by the Service must not be used to make, delay or replace clinical decisions. Clinical decisions remain the sole responsibility of the treating healthcare professional. Any use in a clinical setting requires the prior approval of the local research ethics board under an approved research protocol.

Every model in the platform ships with a Model Facts label describing its intended use, population, validation, limitations and readiness level. You are responsible for reading it before relying on a model's output.

3. Eligibility and accounts

• You must be at least 18 years old and a healthcare professional, researcher, student or engineer with a legitimate research or evaluation purpose.
• Registration requires an email address, your name, a professional licence number where applicable, a specialty and a password, and acceptance of the current versions of these Terms and of the Privacy Policy. You must provide accurate information and keep it up to date.
• You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and for all activity under your account. Notify us without delay of any unauthorised use.
• Accounts on the public demonstration are subject to usage quotas, concurrency limits and bot protection. We may suspend or terminate an account that breaches these Terms, with immediate revocation of active sessions.

4. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• upload, transfer or otherwise process on the public demonstration any image or data that contains personal health information or that identifies a patient; only fully de-identified data may be used there;
• attempt to re-identify any individual from the de-identified demonstration studies or from any model output;
• use the Service to provide, or to represent that it provides, a diagnosis, treatment recommendation or other clinical service to a patient;
• probe, scan, overload or circumvent the security, rate limits, quotas or access controls of the Service, or access data that belongs to another tenant or user;
• use the Service in violation of applicable law, professional obligations, or the terms of any third-party model or dataset;
• resell or offer the hosted Service to third parties without our written agreement.

5. Open-source licences and third-party components

The PACS-AI software is published as open source. Your use of the source code is governed by the licence of each repository, not by these Terms:

Other bundled models (for example EchoPrime, PanEcho, echo view classifiers) remain subject to the licence or terms of their authors, as stated in their repositories or model cards. Model weights are never distributed with the source code: they are downloaded from their upstream repositories at build time, and access to gated repositories is granted by their owners. Where an upstream licence is not asserted, no rights beyond research evaluation are granted by us.

The GPLv3 requires that modified versions of the backend that you distribute, or make available over a network as a service, be published under the same licence. Contact us if you need a different arrangement.

6. Your content and model outputs

You keep all rights in the data you process with a self-hosted installation. For the public demonstration, only de-identified studies provided by us are available; we do not sell or share user data and we collect only aggregated usage analytics (number of users, models and inference requests), as described in the Privacy Policy.

Model outputs are provided as is. Structured feedback that you give on an output (ratings, corrections, questionnaire answers) may be used, in aggregated or de-identified form, to monitor, evaluate and improve the platform and its models.

7. Intellectual property

PACS-AI, the HeartWise name and logos, and the content of this website are the property of HeartWise and the Montreal Heart Institute or their licensors. Nothing in these Terms grants you rights in them other than as expressly stated, or as granted by the applicable open-source licences.

8. Availability, changes and termination

The public demonstration is provided on a best-effort basis without any availability commitment. We may modify, suspend or discontinue all or part of the Service, change quotas, or remove models at any time. We may terminate or suspend your access if you breach these Terms or if required by law. You may close your account at any time by contacting us.

9. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

THE SERVICE, THE SOFTWARE, THE MODELS AND THEIR OUTPUTS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WARRANTIES OF ACCURACY, MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. MODEL OUTPUTS MAY BE WRONG.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, HEARTWISE, THE MONTREAL HEART INSTITUTE, THEIR PARTNERS, EMPLOYEES AND CONTRIBUTORS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, NOR FOR ANY CLINICAL OUTCOME, ARISING FROM THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE SERVICE. Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot be excluded under applicable law.

10. Privacy

Our processing of personal information is described in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these Terms. The platform's privacy impact assessment under Quebec law is published on the EFVP page.

Privacy Policy · Privacy Impact Assessment Document (EFVP)

11. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Quebec and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein. Any dispute shall be submitted to the courts of the judicial district of Montreal, Quebec, subject to any mandatory consumer-protection rules that apply to you.

12. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. Each version carries a version identifier and an effective date. When we make material changes, registered users will be asked to accept the new version at their next login, and continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance. Earlier versions are available on request.

13. Contact

Questions about these Terms: HeartWise AI Laboratory, Montreal Heart Institute, 5000 Bélanger Street, Montréal, Québec, H1T 1C8, Canada, through the contact form at pacsai.co/contact-us.