Posts by AndreasKnopke

UPDATE:

With V0.9.4 you can optionally burn a viewer application (K-PACS CD Viewer) on the CD created with the K-PACS CD-writer dialog.

A revised version 0.9.4b is available for download. Thanks to the images sent by Georg I found a bug and killed it on the run.
If you still have problems with displaying certain images please send me one or better 2 via email. (zip compressed)

Andreas

Sorry for that,

can you send me an example study that does not work correctly. I tested the new version in my - limited - environment and did not find any problems with CT or MR.

Andreas

V 0.9.4 will be released next Monday or Tuesday.
In contrary to the previous topic I focused development on some different issues:

- advanced splitscreen/compare mode with up to 6 independend panels
- Scout navigator
- Images selection for printout and export
- Drag&drop functionality within the viewer
- K-PACS lite viewer, that can be burned on CD and that does not need any installation
- Database regeneration tool

You will notice some disabled buttons: "report" in the viewer and "modality worklist" in the study browser window. These features will not be accessible in the freely available K-PACS version.

Any comments are welcome

regards,

Andreas

Hello Ken,

I plan to release an update next week.
It will bring: scoutline visualization, 6 independent viewer panels, series binding. I abandoned the use of the ezDICOM activeX which took me a while. The code is now completely implemented within the main application which is of great advantage because I can now easily write a K-PACS lite viewer that will be burned on patient CD's and there will be no incompatibilities with applications that use the official ezDICOM version by Chris any more.

I recently got to know Rafael Sanguinetti, a decent programmer from Uruguay who immediately joined the project. He is currently working on the dicom core. As I pointed out, I finished porting the activeX to VCL/CLX. This component will be made open source shortly.

regards,
Andreas

I personally have no experience with CDmedic but many users reported compatibilty with K-PACS. At first you should check if the settings in "dicom settings" for CDmedic are correct. Then try to query the server. Look at the logfiles of the server, here you might find the problem.
Btw.: if you did not change the default settings, then the AET of K-Pacs is not KPACS but KPSERVER.

Regards,
Andreas

Right now the CD-creator dialog shows the first available CD-writer only. It does not check for writeable CD's. I will add an option for selecting the CD writer if you have more than one.
A viewer application will not be burned on CD yet. I am working on that as well. You can read the CD's with any dicom viewer that is capable of reading DICOMDIR (e.g K-PACS or DicomWorks)

Andreas

You actually can select "letter" or "legal" in the dropdown listbox if you need US papersize. The default will change to the last selected item.

The only reason for this strange behavior that I can imagine is that the greyscale convertion fails somehow. It uses the windows application interface and some strange window settings could prevent it from working correctly.
Right now I can not help you but I am currently reworking the image convertion routines completely and will have a look if I can avoid these kind of routines.

Andreas

It definitely seems to be a failure of revieving images. Most of the time this is due to move restrictions on the servers side or inappropriate or incomplete query results. After a query you can find the received query items (not the actual images) in the K-PACS main folder (for instance rsp0001.dcm). Please send me one of those files so I can see if all requested tag values are returned.

Andreas

Does the error appear when trying to convert the image to dcm or when loading it into the image convertion form? And can you convert the same images with one of the other k-pacs installs?

Andreas

Hello Bob,

this seems to be a problem with low system resources. What is the amount of RAM installed on your system? Are there any tasks running with high CPU-load (see taskmanager [CTRL+ALT+DEL]).
And what is the amount of physical memory available (not in swap file). See taskmanager - systemperformance.
And finally, how many studies are in the local imagebox right now? K-PACS will probably slow down with more than 1000.

I installed the new version on serveral systems from 1Gig PIII/256mb to 3Gig Athlon/1000mb and I did not notice a slowdown compared to previous version, neither a big difference between low and high end systems.

Andreas

As far as I understood your explanation I can guess what the problem is. The object that defines the active monitor and the resolution gets confused because both monitors have the focus.
How did you get windows to drive two monitors like this? I use the standard Windows multi display setup and this works fine.

Andreas

Ps.: I will try to figure out how to solve this problem.

There might be some problem with the translation file custom.ini because I actually translated the places you mention. I would advise you to download the kpinstall.exe from http://www.k-pacs.net again and reinstall (update) your version.

Right now there is no option available for selecting a third party cd-burner program, so you either have to use the build in (xp wrapper) writer or create a cd-project, which means that the CD content will be written to a directory in k-pacs/cd-projects/ directory. If so you have to start Nero manually and select this folder to burn the CD.

The created CD's right now contain all dicom files of the selected studies + a DICOMDIR file. Currently a viewer is not included. To read those CD's you need a Dicom Viewer (e.g. DicomWorks, K-PACS) that is capable of reading DICOMDIR files. In case you want to read the CD with K-PACS click "Filesystem" and select the CD-drive. A dialog will ask you if you want to use the found DICOMDIR. Click yes and you will see the studies an the CD in a grid. Select the studie you want to view through doubleclicking.

Andreas

It depends on the complexity the autosend rules are supposed to be.
If you just need a plain autoroute like: route all images from station x to station y then I would suggest you to use a CONQUEST server to do this. There are only a few autorouting features but in most cases it will meet the requirements. If it should be more complex then have a look at the dcmrouter application (sourceforge).
At the moment I do not plan to add this functionality to K-PACS because it is thougth to be a diagnostic workstation rather than a router.

Andreas

In order to help you should give some more information:

From which workstation do you want to transfer the image, and is K-pacs the receiving application?

In case it is K-pacs the default server settings are: Port: 111, AET: KPSERVER.

You have to state Port, AET and IP of the receiver application at your workstation in order to send images.

Andreas

Do you mean the main form where all the studies are listed or the viewer window?
Can you actually view images?
On multi monitor setups a known problem is, that k-pacs main form only shows on the first monitor but the viewer window can be placed on either monitor or use both.

Andreas

I had the chance to test an Aycan OsirixCE workstation at the DRG Congress in Berlin. Aycan will sell a CE approved version of Osirix with one or more medical displays in a quarter of a year or so.
Osirix does definitely play in the professional league regarding it's 3D ability and it's overall functionality. And I do not mean Merge or Stentor with "professional league" but Tiani, GE and Siemens.

Andreas

For all of you who are interested in the scout line issue.

I successfully implement this feature and I am testing it now.
There will be a floating "scout pilot" window on request that shows upper and lower bounderies and the current location.
This feature will be available with the next update.

Andreas

The goal for K-PACS is to become and then stay the best freely available diagnostic workstation for windows computers (I admit that trying to beat OSIRIX would be hopless right now).
There might be a commercially available version in the future, that is CE approved and might have some additional features and functions.
For doctors who seek an affordable, approved workstation with professional support this will be a good alternative to Merge and co.

Andreas