<title>Operator interface design for a PACS primary diagnosis workstation</title>

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One of the challenges to the PACS workstation designer is to cost effectively fulfill the range of requirements from those of the entry-level system to those of the fully digital hospital. The workstation must therefore support many of the functions of film-based image storage and image information systems. A primary diagnosis workstation must support rapid selection and viewing of patient examination folders. The user must easily and rapidly sequence through a stack of examinations. Activities such as printing films, archiving images, and retrieving older examinations must be initiated easily, without interfering with the diagnostic use of the workstation. Some of these functions are executed by the workstation itself while others are performed by service nodes on the PACS network. The workstation's user interface must make the architecture of the system transparent, providing access to the services while concealing the complexity of their accomplishment. This paper discusses the approach taken to the user interface of a commercial PACS primary diagnosis workstation. This workstation may be configured as an entry-level PACS or as a single workstation in a very complex system. Local image storage, retrieval, archiving and display functions will be described. Networking with modalities, image storage systems and image management systems will also be discussed.© (1990) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.