Posts by stridde

Dear Gary

Just to answer your three questions:

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Is Kpacs free to use?

Yes, to anyone who wants to view DICOM images for non-diagnostic purposes.

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is it a Dicom Store/server?

No, it is a thick-client DICOM viewer. It cannot be queried and used to retrieve images from it.

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Is it possible to point external web viewers to it?

Depends on what exactly you mean. If the web viewer is run on the computer where K-PACS is installed you could probably integrate an application call into your web viewer to open K-PACS on the system (would require changes in the system's registry), but I don't think that this is the scenario you intend. Otherwise, you cannot use an external application to make use of the K-PACS study table and load the images there into another viewer.

There is a number of attributes and values that affect how the image is presented on the screen or how the image is handled by an application. The fact that you say that the windowing works differently on the study makes it an interesting case. I've never heard of such a behavior. Note, however, that we do not grant technical support for the freeware K-PACS. I can only suggest that you try out our professional radiology reading station iQ-VIEW and check how the study is handled in this software. If the behavior is the same as in K-PACS, you may contact our support team, e.g. by using our web form. Attach the study or at least one representative image for further evaluation. Without such a sample it will be difficult to give an answer or maybe even a solution.

K-PACS will read out the information in the DICOM image to present it in the viewer. For windowing, this are usually the DICOM attributes 0028,1050 (WindowCenter) and 0028,1051 (WindowWidth). Alternatively, there may be used special look-up tables. If K-Pacs does not find values for these DICOM attributes or the type of look-up table encoded in the images is not supported, K-PACS will calculate its own automatic contrast for the image. The result may not look the same as on your original modality, because the calculation method might be different.

My recommendation: Check if the center/window values are stored in the DICOM information of the images. If not, adapt your modality to save the values used at the modality so that they can also be used at other stations, such as K-PACS.

Of course, also different display types and/or differences in the calibration of the displays connected to the modality and the workstations can lead to differences in the visualization of the images.

You're welcome.

I'm not sure about the legal situation in your country. Be aware that K-PACS is not a medical device (e.g. according to CE and FDA) and, therefore, may be excluded from use for diagnostic purposes also in the Dominican Republic. Feel free to check out our professional reading station software iQ-VIEW and our DICOM archive iQ-WEB, incl. web-based viewers, for a fully supported diagnostic solution.

That's correct behavior. K-PACS does not provide Query SCP functionality as a DICOM viewer. You can use K-PACS to query a PACS server and retrieve images from an archive (such as ConQuest). You can also receive data sent directly to K-PACS or forward data from K-PACS to another station. But K-PACS itself cannot be queried by other DICOM nodes.

That's easy. Load the study you wish to convert into the viewer. Select the series you want to export, go to the "Export" menu, the "Export to image(s)" and use the option "Export as AVI" in the sub-menu. For JPEG, BMP or TIFF, use one of the other options (depending on what you need to export - study, series, image or selection), decide on the format and export to a folder of your choice.

So, it's basically the direct radiography images that do not work. Did you try any other types of images, such as CT or MR? The basic question is whether the issue is contained to only specific images (this would suggest an issue concerning the images) or affects all images (which would suggest an issue with the application or database).

Please keep in mind that we do not grant technical support for our freeware offers, such as K-PACS. Technical help is given only for our professional products - either for installation/initial configuration support or after purchasing a software license including support package. Regarding VET-VIEW you may contact one of our local resellers or our support team (support [at] image-systems [dot] biz).

Difficult to say without having the image file. It may be that the type of image is not supported. Or maybe just the windowing is off and cannot be interpreted correctly. Try using the windowing tools or set an auto contrast to see if that helps. Sometimes also look-up tables or bitmap overlays are problematic. Try to disable their display and check if that changes anything.

Does it happen with all images or just a specific type. If all images are affected, it may be a general application issue. For instance, K-PACS has several issues on 64 bit OS.

iQ-VIEW/PRO is able to import and display fluoroscopy images. And you can use the existing tools for post-processing. Not sure what you are specifically looking for concerning the tools. Feel free to try out iQ-VIEW as a trial version for 30 days.

iQ-VIEW is a workstation software. Server systems are not supported, neither is its use in a terminal server environment, which is why the installer is limited to client systems. An installation on server OS is aborted by design.

To simplify licensing, the concurrent license system can be used. There are also options to make configuration of the individual stations easier. Contact your local reseller for assistance or our support team at support@image-systems.biz.

Thanks for your inquiry, Chad.

We are looking into options to support video formats in our products. But at this point, I can't say when it will come and if it will be part of a future iQ-VIEW package or maybe a separate tool.

To receive technical support for our medical device software iQ-VIEW/PRO, please contact your local reseller with all information regarding your iQ-VIEW installation (version number, license details) and a detailed description of the issue. When they have the necessary background information, they can then check whether specific settings should be changed, whether an update to a newer iQ-VIEW version should be done or if it would help to upgrade your computer with more memory.

If you are looking for an archive with integrated web-based DICOM viewer, then K-PACS is not the right solution. Although the software has "PACS" in its name, it is a thick-client DICOM viewer. You would be able to temporarily store a number of studies and you could also view them (non-diagnostically), but the software is limited to a local PC. If you wanted to view the studies on more than just one station, you would therefore need more K-PACS installations and you would have to send the studies to all these stations to be able to view them.

K-PACS is, however, a freeware and can be used without cost. As a downside, it comes without user documentation, without technical support (except for maybe a reply in this forum) and cannot be used for any diagnostic purposes.

Our thin client viewing options integrated with a DICOM storage, are professional applications with license fees.

Hope that helps a little still.

Check your configuration and firewall settings. Could be that it's just the K-PACS server port that is either configured wrongly in ConQuest or is not open for use by the K-PACS server. The ConQuest log may help you pinpoint the issue.

The iQ-VIEW trial license runs for 30 days. During the first 15 days, you can use all functions of the application that would be available in the iQ-VIEW PRO version. Afterwards, the trial slips into BASIC mode, which means that through the last 15 days of the trial all functions available only in the PRO version will be deactivated. The calibration function is part of the iQ-VIEW basic package and will be available through the entire 30 day period.

That's exactly what the "calibrate" function in iQ-VIEW/K-PACS is for. You can use it to measure an object of known size, just like the penny, and use this as calibration. All distance measurements will then be based on that calibration and, thus, correct the magnification in X-ray images. The calibration function in our iQ-VIEW is enhanced and better suited to do calibrations based on round objects. Feel free to download a trial version from the "Download Center" on our website and try it out yourself.

Sounds to me as if someone "closed" the patient table in a wrong way - by moving it so far to the left with a mouse drag that it seems to have disappeared but is actually still open. You can verify that this is actually the observed behavior by clicking the "Filesystem" tab. If the folder tree cannot be seen either, that's exactly the issue.

To rectify this, please close K-PACS, browse to the K-PACS installation directory in the Windows Explorer, open the file “k-pacs.ini” and look for the following entries:

PatientPanelWidth=
PatientPanelExpanded=

and delete the values stored after the equal sign (“=”). Then save the changes and restart the application. The issue should be solved now.

For the future, please remember to use the available switch to the left of the patient list to open and close the panel.

There are two reasons basically for a database regeneration:

1. If you think that your database has somehow become corrupted and the number of studies in your study table does no longer fit the number of study folders in your imagebox folders.

2. If you move the database and imagebox to different locations on your hard disk, i.e. if you separate their folder locations.

In case you want to store the images you receive in K-PACS on a different hard disk, a different partition or simply a different folder, I highly recommend to move both the imagebox folders (i.e. the study data including all images of all series) and the database files (KPStudy.dir, Series.dir, Image.dir of all studies, series and images) to the same location. This also saves you from the trouble of performing a database regeneration as the database will still know the location of the studies, series and images.

Just don't forget to update the paths to imagebox and database in the K-PACS server administration tool. And make sure to end the paths there with a "\" (backslash).

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. You can set the viewer window to be spanned across two displays using the dual display mode under "Additional settings". Make sure that the viewer window is not maximized when you activate the option. You may have to drag the window into the preferred position. Do not use the maximize state afterwards to keep the dual display mode.

This way you can easily compare two studies, using two displays.

We did a lot of work on that in our iQ-VIEW software to improve the behavior of this mode. So, it will certainly be more comfortable using it with iQ-VIEW. But it's available in K-PACS as well.

It is not possible to configure the mouse buttons. Right now it is possible to change the center/window values of an image by using the center mouse button. This works also when a different function (e.g. stack mode) is active in the toolbar.