Image Download Problems

Andreas

Thanks for producing a great entry level DICOM reader like K-Pacs.

We are using K-Pacs in a small Pacific Island where a cardiologist visits approx every 6 weeks to perform 6-10 angiograms using mobile C-arm equipment. This is a very low cost operation in line with the country's economy, and for that reason we chose K-Pacs to burn the images to disk for the referring doctor.

When we were using the earlier versions of K-Pacs, the downloads were relatively trouble free, but the file size was too large to burn to a CD. We anxiously awaited the release of V1.5 with its DVD burning capabilities, and initially it downloaded the DICOM files and burned DVD's well.

But now we have encountered a problem. The download seems to progress OK until the final stages, when all the images are shown as having been sent from the c-arm unit, but the export is not flagged as complete.

We then get an error on the PC that the Storage SCP has encountered a problem and stopped, and the download either fails completely or else does not transfer all of the images in the series for a patient.

We have tried using 2 different PCs; one running Windows Vista Home Premium; and one running Windows XP SP2. The result on both is similar. The Vista machine has a 2.0GB dual core processor and about 30 GB of spare hard disk space, and was the one which worked well previously.

We also thought there might be some arbitrary directory size for the downloaded images, so we created a second directory K-Pacs Images directory without success.

If we force the server to restart from within K-Pacs, there is no further success with the image download, but the small linked dosage report then downloads.

It looks as if we may have some file size limitations, as the problem is getting progressively worse. At the same time, we are probably collecting more images for each angiogram - typically 800-1000 images, and around 3GB per study.

In some studies we tried importing part studies and this worked with just a few images.

Can you please advise a course of action to overcome this problem?

Thanks

Norm H

Rafael

We were using the lossless JPEG option when the problem appeared, and tried uncompressed as an alternative (unsuccessfully).

Can you explain the function of the -nd additional parameter please.

Thanks

Norm H

Rafael

Thanks for the explanation.

We are using a Philips Pulsera BV (less than 6 months old) with full DICOM conformance.

The downloads worked OK when the image series was about 1Gb, but became problematic over 2 Gb.

Thanks

Norm H

Andreas

If we use the +B parameter and/or select uncompressed file transfer, will the transferred file write to disk without being memory dependent.

Because of the way this service operates with the periodic travel to Fiji, we are using a fairly well spec'd notebook so we are effectively at memory limit.

There is no PACS or data storage capability in the facility where we work in Fiji, so we have to get the solution with the notebook.

Thanks

Norm H

Andreas

We will try the options you have suggested. The difficulty we face is that the C-arm equipment is in Fiji and we are back in Australia. I am trying to locate equivalent C-arm equipment locally so we can do some testing.

They way we are wanting to work with K-Pacs is as follows:

* download images to notebook - 8-9 cine series per patient of up to 1000 images to a max of approx 3Gb

* review individual cine loops off-site for reporting

* burn image series onto a DVD for distribution to referring doctor

* export images to a server on return to Australia for archive purposes (will only keep approx last 30 patient series on notebook)

Should this all be achievable.

The download and review worked OK pre V1.5, but the file was too big for a CD. Initially the DVD burn with V1.5 was working OK but the larger image series sizes seems to have caused difficulties.

We have yet to try the export to a local server - is there anything we should know here?

Thanks

Norm H

Thank you for earlier advice on downloads to K-PACS. We are getting much better results, but still get the odd anomaly. Unfortunately we only get to the Pacific Island where we work every 6-8 weeks so troubleshooting on the equipment and downloads can be quite protracted. We are using K-PACS 1.5 with the -nc switch on, downloading angio studies from a Philips Pulsera.

Today we were downloading angiography cases - two of which went without a problem. The third case was a much larger study comprising 19 series and about 1100 images.

The download went well until about 80% when it froze and we got a message that K-pacs server had stopped. There were 2 series from th\is study not visible in K-PACS.

I tried reloading these two missing series and there was no error message, but series 18 was still not visible while series 19 was now visible in K-PACS. Series 18 had 217 images and was about 520 mB - the largest series in this study.

I tried several more times to download series 18 - on each occasion there were no errors and the download seemed to work OK - but series 18 was not visible in K-PACS.

I then looked in the files in Windows Explorer and found there was a folder for what should have been series 18 with 4 identical data files from the 4 downloads, but there was no thumbnail image like the other series folders.

I relocated this folder away from the Imagebox and re-ran the download for just this series. Again I got the error that K-PACS server stopped on the first download, and a subsequent download of the series seemed to go OK, but still no series 18 images available in K-PACS.

I again removed the folder for this series from the Imagebox and re-ran the download, flagging about one quarter of the images on the Pulsera as protected and only downloaded the protected images. Now the download worked fine and the series 18 images (protected) were visible in K-PACS.

Before the last step above, I decided to burn the images available for this study in K-PACS to DVD, as I do with all other studies. The burning interface came up showing a file size of -1767Mb (ie is negative) - it was about 2Gb in Windows Explorer. I decided to see what happened when I burnt the DVD. There was an error message at the completion of the burn, but the DVD contained all the available data and worked as expected. I have never encountered the negative file size on any other study.

Any advice / suggestions / feedback would be appreciated as soon as practical. We leave this location in 2 days time and will not be back for at least 6 weeks, so would like to try any fixes while we are still here.

Many thanks

Norm H

Andreas

Thanks for the advice.

Restarting both the K-Pacs application and rebooting the PC have been tried often but with no apparent effect.

In this case the number of images and the size of the series seemed to trigger the fault. Once we reduced the size of the series by just protecting about 25% of the images, the transfer worked OK and was automatically integrated into the database.

But all the unsuccessful transfers were still not visible in K-Pacs, even though the large data files were in that folder.

On previous occasions when we experienced similar transfer failures, the series may have been smaller but there was less hard drive capacity available.

Are there any practical series size limits within K-Pacs or is this a function of the capacity of the hardware?

For now, armed with this insight, we can work around the limitation.

Norm H