Abstract: A medical image management system including an image archive server for storing image datasets received from a plurality of image acquisition computers and a plurality of display stations for displaying requested image datasets retrieved from the image archive server is provided with an authentication and security system which includes an authentication server for maintaining and storing hashes and timestamps, and for providing hash, timestamp pairs in encrypted form in response to requests from display stations. The image acquisition computers are configured for computing hashes and providing them and image dataset identifiers to the authentication server, receiving timestamps from the authentication server which are then inserted in the image datasets, and storing the image datasets in the image archive server.