DICOM search in medical image archive solution e-Sushrut Chhavi

Abstract

Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) standard promotes the communication of digital image in the medical imaging environment. A picture archiving and communication system(PACS) is an electronic and ideally film less information system for acquiring, transporting, storing and electronically displaying medical images. It plays a key role in provision of clinical information in the form of images and reports to informed decision making and provision of care. e-Sushrut Chhavi is such an enterprise PACS Solution developed by CDAC, Noida that goes beyond the Radiology department which caters to the need of any department of the hospital that deals with medical images, DICOM or Non-DICOM. DICOM search is the frequently used feature available in e-Sushrut Chhavi and the DICOM Standard for providing Query/Retrieve facility in the image archiving solutions. In e-Sushrut Chhavi this search mechanism is provided for DICOM images and also for converted DICOM images. By using this search facility any user can quickly access Patient images through a multilevel query User Interface. To achieve a better DICOM search in the archive storage the archive server extracts Patient, Study, Series and image level information from the received image and puts in the archive database. So any search related with user given values with respect to search keywords webPACS system only searches the archive database and generate the results depending on the available image information at that time. So the addition any Patient's images in the archive storage can be checked at any point of time. And also any addition of a Series of images or Study of a patient in the archive storage will reflect in the search result. The method of extracting information from the DICOM image is to look for the desired tag and its value. In e-Sushrut Chhavi all the images converted to DICOM have similar Study Instance UID, So when user want to list images generated by e-Chhavi modality or application it actually leads to a search based on Study UID. The DICOM search facility can be extended further for the need of any department that generates patient images by getting monthly, quarterly or annual reports for any modality or patient age or any other information field and also benefits hospital as a whole for viewing a specific image or the associated report of the Patient through a secured user profile under a category of users.