K-PACS how to's: send images via e-mail

  • 1. Rigth-click on the 'Export' button


    2. select 'security' in the popup menu
    here you can choose 'encryption' or/and 'anonymization'
    type in a password in case you chose encryption. Click on 'Accept' to save settings


    3. Rigth-click again on 'Export' and select 'compression'
    You can choose between 4 compression levels: uncompressed (not recommended for e-mailing), light compression (lossless, CR about 2.5:1), medium compression (lossy, CR about 4:1) and strong (lossy, CR about 6:1). Click 'Accept' to save settings.


    4. Rigth-click again on 'Export' and select 'manage e-mail addresses'.
    Type in all the receipients addresses and click on 'Accept'


    5. Finally select the study you want to send in the study grid and left-click on 'Export'. K-PACS will compress, encrypt and anonymize in dependence on your settings. In the e-mail dialog select your receipients name, type in concern and check if settings are correct. Sorry for the german words in the english version, i simply forgott to localize them. I promisse to fix it as soon as possible. For now: ja = yes, nein = no, leicht=light, mittel=medium, hoch(stark)=strong.


    6. Click on 'Accept' to call your standard e-mail program (probably outlook or outlook express). It will show you the ready-to-send email. Check if everything is correct and click on 'send'. That's it.


    Btw.: you don't have to select security, compression or the e-mail manager every time you send an email. Just do it once and change it if you wish a different method.


    For teleradiology testing: if your partner uses k-pacs as well, he simply needs to import the received e-mail attachments (see 'K-PACS how to's: Import). K-PACS will automatically uncompress and (after entering the right password) decode all images. If your partner does not use K-PACS, you should not encode your images with K-PACS, because the encoding method is proprietory and no other program will be able to decode them. In this case you should use a different encoding method like PGP.



    Andreas

  • Basically, the maximum size of the attachments and the maximum overall size are depending on your email provider. Some provider limit the size of attachments (e.g. 20 MB) and there is often also a limit set for the mailbox itself. So, you need to remember to clear out the mailbox regularly as DICOM emails can take up a lot of space.


    You can compress the images before sending them - to save some space, but you have to decide how much. Since K-PACS is not a medical device and therefore cannot be used for diagnostic purposes anyway, you would probably be able to choose a higher, lossy compression. The images would no longer be fit for diagnosis, but could still be viewed.

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