We'll be upgrading to a 16-Slice CT in Q1 of 2008 and I need to start planning expansion of storage.
Does anyone know where there is a list of the average sizes of Dicom modalities which I can reference?
Or, can someone that has a 16-slice CT tell me what their average study size is.
thanks
Hi radtraveller.
The product is working well. It's the perfect comapanion to Conquest.
The interface is easy to use. It is very logical and easy for even a person like myself to understand. And the logging is real time so, you actually get the transmission times and number of slices it is transmitting in real time.
They do have a 30 day trial. Do a google search on ramsoft dicom router.
carl
This was very important for me to be working before I could move forward with a final implementation of Conquest. In addition I have a requirement to forward prior studies to a reading workstation based on modality.
I've installed the RamSoft DicomRouter product and been running this for 4 weeks. It accomplishes everything I need. I am routing studies based on modality and referring provider to specific Conquest servers based on this rules. The scheduling component is very flexible and can be based on day of the week rules. The fetching of priors from the Conquest PACS and sent to the reading workstation is based on number of weeks back to pull. The logging is very succint and detailed.
The product is mutli-threaded and I believe can support 10 simultanous sessions.
The cost is $2000.00 and for that amount of money it was not worth me spending alot of time trying to come up with methods to route based on time frame as well as figuring out how to pull priors based on a set of rules.
Currently I am running Conquest at our main location and storing MG/US/MR/CT. I have 2.2 terrabyte of studies and replicate the entire PACS to another one of our locations for redundency. I push studies to 6 additional Conquest sites based on referring providers. Conquest works flawless for what it does.
My next objective is to find a reasonably priced Web Interface with an excellent viewer that allows both our internal physicans as well as outside referring physicians to pull studies and securely deliver them either internal to our company or outside our walls.
So far I have 3 products that appear like good candidates and my budget is no greater than $35,000. Whithin that scope I need to handle 100 named users or 30 concurrent sessions.
Curious if anyone else has found supplementing the core of Conquest with third party products and had success ?
Does anyone have the DEFER function working?
I am running 1.4.12alpha and when I have implemented this function, the files do queue, but once the time is reached to Not Defer, files are never transfered.
Wonder if I am doing something wrong?
Bushranger and Andreas,
thanks both for your support. I commented out the section in the dgatesop.lst and everything is working great!
The other day I started sending MRI studies directly from a Philips MRI unit to Conquest. When attempting to view a study from K-Pacs it displays MR/PR for the modality and appears to load the images but there is no display.
Interestingly though, for the past several months I had been sending the studies to a Efilm workstation and nightly I would grab the files and copy them into the Conquest GUI. All those studies are retrieved and viewed flawlessly in K-PACS.
If I point Efilm or IQ-View to the Conquest Pacs and retrieve studies sent directly to Conquest, both applications can retrieve and view the studies flawlessly.
Is there a configuration within K-Pacs that I am missing?
I've been struggling with the FDA approved rating for some time and am curious what the implications are. I'd love to find the information that clearly outlines the requirements for usage.
I justify using Conquest with 2 statements, 1.) because I am not manipulating the actual image (everything I do is uncompressed) then all I am doing is storing and routing images, and 2. what I am storing is temporary until I decide on a FDA approved PACS.
For me temporary could be 10 years and until that time, or unless there is some information that I clearly what I am doing is wrong, then I'll probably continue to do what I do.
Does anyone know what the effort is to get something FDA approved and if that effort is really is one of cost, I wonder if someone funded it, would Marcel consider that?
Andreas,
I did test with multiple TS sessions downloading and viewing different images at the same time. Does not appear to be a conlfict.
When utilizing the ROI function in K-PACS it seems that on a traditional terminal the function works well but under TS the results vary. The same results will often appear at various points which obviously should not return the same value.
How are you making your calculation? Is it reading the actual image or is it reading a pixel count?
Thanks
carl
I've been struggling with deploying a web interface to Conquest and have been testing K-PACS remotely running under Windows Terminal Server.
I am pleased with the performance and the functionality it provides for remote physicians. The feedback I have received is that it is great. When running under Terminal Server a user just needs to take their time as screen refreshes are a bit slower than running K-PACS on a desktop.
My concern is when multiple users attempt to run K-PACS at the same time. Because they are sharing a common directory structure will it cause problems?
Does K-PACS support a multi-user environment and if not, can it be setup to do so?
I am curious if anyone else has tested this under Terminal Server and if they had such great performance as I am having?
Bushranger ... I am storing all data uncompressed. I am trying to understand the differences in the file structure and if there is a benefit between one or the other.
I've noticed that within Conquest when a new study arrives from our GE mammo unit, or if I drag studies from Efilm workstations, that Conquest creates a directory with the medical record number under the data drive subdirectory as defined in the setup. That seems all very logical to me and makes it easy for me to understand the process. I've worked previously with a PACS vendor who utlized a single storage directory and incorporated a DICOMDIR file which I believe is an index to the files stored below it.
If I use .DCM files, which if i understand correctly, will be contained in one directory, does that mean that each file is processed, and added to the database sequently? Let's say there are 2 studies with 5 images per study and let's say that the files are processed sequently by Conquest, and let's say that study 1/file 1 is processed first, and then study2/file3, and then study 1/file4, etc .. how does Conquest know to associate all 5 images per study within one reference?
Or a simpler question might be, if I had a study with 5 images and I dropped 4 of them into the conquest interface, and then a day later dropped the 5th study in, will conquest know to associate the 5th image with the other 4 from that study? If the answer is yes then then I can understand how this will work.
Bobomfb ... appreciate your suggestions.
Besides importing these prior studies, I also will be replicating the entire database/files to a second server (both servers exactly the same hardware config) and once replicate the second server will be placed at one of our remote locations with real time replication.
Ideally I'd like to load all these studies on both servers over a weekend and then move on. I'll give more thought to your suggestions
thanks
I am working with NDMA to obtain our archive of mammo studies they have been sent over the past 30 months prior to us setting up Conquest.
I have 2 questions hoping someone can guide me in.
1.) They have offered to me either straight forward DICOM files with a .DCM extension or a tree study similiar to /Study UID/Series UID/Image.
Can both formats be brought into Conquest? Is the 'tree study' approach similiar to what Conquest uses?
2.) There is 1.2 terabytes of uncompressed studies. What is the best method of importing these into Conquest? Do I drag them into the Conquest interface, bringing in a few thousand a day over severel months, or is there a better method?
I made no changes whatsoever. Everything is default install.
Mike, I am just learning but feel I understand this process enough to comment on it although I may not use the correct terminology.
From the GE Mammo unit we push both raw and presentation images to 1.) offsite NDMA archive, 2.) Mammo workstation, and we push raw images to our CAD unit. We've been doing this for 3 years so our PACS has been the offsite archive.
We are able to retrieve both presentation and raw images from NDMA and pull these back to our Mammo workstation where we apply a GE enhancement I believe is called 'premium view'. In addition, we can retrieve from this archive raw images required for our CAD unit.
Conquest is storing both raw and presentation images which I am able to retrieve and apply the GE 'premium view' to, which I don't believe we could do if we did not have the raw image. Likewise for the CAD unit.
Hope this makes sense.
Just yesterday I connected a GE Senograohe 2000D and am sending to Conquest both processed and raw studies.
Is this related to your question?
