1. A medical system architecture for interactive transmission and progressive representation of compressed image data of multi-component images, comprising: at least one imaging modality for acquiring image data representing examination images; for each imaging modality, a computer workstation associated therewith for processing the image data acquired by the associated imaging modality; a communication network in communication with said computer workstation for transferring said examination images, after processing in the computer workstation, to locations remote from said computer workstation; a storage device in communication with said communication network for storing said examination images; at least one further workstation in communication with said communication network for post-processing the examination images processed in said computer workstation; a compression device in communication with said computer network for compressing and organizing the image data representing said examination images and for storing the compressed data in packets, as packetized image data, with parameters linked to the respective packets defining permissible access to the respective packets; and a decompression device in communication with said communication network for decompressing the packetized image data packet-by-packet dependent on a request from said further workstation, for causing multi-component images to be generated at said further workstation with progressive parameters.