A downloadable agent facilitates medical image transmission in accordance with a clinical trial protocol. The agent includes program code for obtaining or receiving a medical image from a computer storage device or a DICOM-compliant diagnostic instrument, program code for accepting textual information about the patient or medical image and associating the textual information with the medical image to prevent dissociation of the textual information and the medical image, program code for executing a data compliance protocol, program code for encrypting the image and textual information and for compressing at least the image, and program code for transmitting the encrypted image and textual information across a wide area network to a remote translator for decompressing, de-encrypting and viewing of the image and textual information. The data compliance process prohibits inclusion of patient identity information in the associated textual information and medical image.