1. A method for storing and providing medical image data in a distributed, computer-based system of a clinical facility comprising a plurality of satellites, wherein each satellite comprises at least one imaging modality, an image administration server, and a local database, and wherein said clinical facility further comprises a central database configured for administration of stored image data and a central long-term storage for long-term storage of said image data, comprising: acquiring image data at an imaging modality of a satellite of the plurality of satellites, said image data comprising metadata and pixel data, wherein the metadata includes hierarchically arranged data elements that include a patient data element having information corresponding to a patient associated with the corresponding image data, a study or series data element that identifies a study or series associated with the corresponding image data, a modality data element having information about an imaging modality associated with the image data, and an image data element having pixel data information associated with the corresponding image data; centrally storing, in said central long-term storage, the acquired image data and image data acquired at all other satellites of the plurality of satellites; locally storing the metadata of the image data acquired at the satellite in the local database of the satellite; in said central database, centrally replicating the metadata of the image data acquired at the satellite and metadata stored in the respective local databases of the other satellites of the plurality of satellites; filtering the replicated metadata corresponding to the image data acquired at the satellite to remove one or more of the data elements of the replicated metadata corresponding to the image data acquired at the satellite to generate partial metadata that corresponds to the image data acquired at the satellite and includes a subset of the data elements of the corresponding replicated metadata, wherein the filtering the replicated metadata includes determining a hierarchy level of the hierarchically arranged data elements of the replicated metadata, and removing the one or more data elements from the replicated metadata up to the hierarchy level of the hierarchically arranged data elements; and at the respective local databases of the other satellites of the plurality of satellites, acquiring and replicating, in a decentralized replication procedure, the partial metadata corresponding to the image data acquired at the satellite from the central database, and storing the replicated partial metadata in the respective local databases of the other satellites of the plurality of satellites.