Posts by CKRONENW

It has been awhile since I last visited the K-Pacs group. I note that there seem to be no updates since about 2010. Is K-Pacs still being developed or supported?

Not so much a bug as a suggestion. Has any thought been given to providing a domain login facility when starting iQ-VIEW? We have active directory user groups for domain logins to our commercial PACS. It would be good to limit/log/track user access to studies using iQ-VIEW. I have looked but don't see anything suitable in the iQ-VIEW documentation.

I am doing a first pass evaluation of iQ-View. I created a couple of CD projects and did a CD burn. I don't seem to find any quick means for deleting unwanted projects, either for specific patients or for all patients. Am I missing something? (I don't really want to depend on users and Windows Explorer to find and delete all of these files.) There should probably be a check box on the CD Burn window to delete all project files after burning.

Inquiring minds want to know

You're not in a situation with a firewall - either hardware or software - between K-Pacs and the server which would block the IP port you have selected? I have had that problem where BlackIce Defender has been rolled out to our workstations and by policy blocks all but a few of the privileged ports (below 1024). Changing from port 104 to 1040 cured that for us.

I should add that whatever port number that you choose must not conflict with other applications running on your computer. (For example port 80 is used for HTTP connections and thus could not also be assigned to Dicom.)

The answer depends somewhat upon your local network configuration and any network policies that might be in place within your organization. The port numbers 1-1023 are classified as 'privileged' and in some places these may be blocked by firewalls or local firewall software running on your K-Pacs PC. (e.g. , things like Black Ice defender or Zonealarm). In our situation, privleged ports are selectively blocked by Black Ice Defender as a matter of policy and thus we need to select another unused port > 1023 as our Dicom port (for example we use 1040 in this case). The port should be unique to your computer (i.e., two Dicom packages running on the same computer could not both use port 104), but multiple computers might each use port 104 for their Dicom connections. You can find a list of standard assigned port numbers at:

http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers

What new and exciting features have been added to the newly posted version? Enquiring minds want to know. Hope you enjoyed your stay at the RSNA, it was a pleasure meeting you there.

I installed v9.5 under my domain account on a workstation. I entered an entry for our PACS system. I was able to store the entry, Dicom echo to the PACS, and when I displayed the patient lookup screen, the entry for the PACS was there as I expected. (Retrieval from the PACS worked properly too.) I logged off and another user logged with his domain account. With this user, however, the patient lookup screen did not show the entry for the PACS system, only the default Conquest and local filebox entries were visible. When we opened the network setup box, the PACS entry was displayed and we could Dicom echo just as before---only the entry in the patient select window was missing. (We were able to push studies from the Agfa PACS with no problem and were also able to view them from the local viewbox menu.)

I sit here salivating vigorously waiting for the next exciting release of K-Pacs. Any update on the release date?

Thanks Andreas. Licensing became the most objectionable feature of Efilm. The need to pay a large amount yearly for reissuance of a license which was locked tightly to the hardware it ran on and which needed to be reissued each time a hardware change was made was a royal pain. I fear that Merge lost sight of their customer base and got greedy.

Will v 9.5 be the first payware version or will it still be available for free download? (If so when?) Can you elaborate on the licensing scheme? Will the license be $300 or so for a perpetual license, or will you go down the same sorry path as Efilm and try to make it a yearly license fee?

When querying our Agfa Impax server for studies, the date range filter appears to work properly, but the modality filter seems to return all modalities instead of just the one requested.

When retrieving some studes, the image display window opens up but shows no images. At times I get a German language error box saying something like Listenindex uberschreitet das maximum. My assumption is that the entire study has not been received from the PACS system. (It would be nice to have a display window which would show the number of frames which have been received for each study sort of like the one Efilm provides. The scrolling progress bar doesn't show enough detail about what is going on.)

Clicking on the Detail button in the patient selection menu display also returns the same Listenindex.... error.

It might be nice to provide a ping and/or C-echo function as a button selection for the network setup window. Select the Dicom device and click on the button to test the connectivity.

This is indeed good news (even if the Efilm folks are a local company). The price of Efilm has escalated beyond what our institution is able to pay. Their requirement for an active $800 service contract in order to reissue a license on the same machine once changes have been made to it has really turned me off to both the product and vendor. Our main use is in creating Dicom CD's, both for issuance to patients and for export to other non-networkable systems, so anything to enhance those functions will be useful to us.

What is your ultimate goal for this product: to commercialize it as has happened to Efilm or to maintain it as freeware?

Do you have/plan to have a mechanism to allow a user to link series together to permit scrolling through an entire CT/MRI study with the scroll wheel?