PACS World

ClearCanvas 2.0 : Preview

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:21:00 +0000

I got my hands on the daily build of the next version of ClearCanvas which is due to be released early next year. The main feature I was after was scheduled auto routing.

Please note:
This preview is of a pre-release version of ClearCanvas, it is not to be used in production.

Scheduled Auto-Routing:
You can now auto forward images at certain non-peak times to a central archive to reduce bandwidth usage during the day.

Admin Dashboard:
The new admin dashboard in the ClearCanvas 2.0 pre-release looks very impressive. It gives an administrator a nice snapshot of what is happening on the server with information such as server disk utilization, duplicate studies, latest log entries, etc. This is a very useful feature that will greatly assist administration of the server. I do however wish they had a big red icon displayed when the ClearCanvas Image service is no longer running on the machine.

You can get the pre-release from the ClearCanvas website: www.clearcanvas.ca

The features above are major improvements in functionality for my environment and once this release becomes available in a stable form, I am going to implement it for one of our new departments for active daily use.

ClearCanvas: First Open Source ISO 13485:2003 Certified PACS/RIS

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:53:00 +0000

ClearCanvas PACS/RIS open source Radiology software is now ISO 13485:2003 certified. The ISO 13485:2003 certification specifies as per their website:

“ISO 13485:2003 specifies requirements for a quality management system where an organization needs to demonstrate its ability to provide medical devices and related services that consistently meet customer requirements and regulatory requirements applicable to medical devices and related services.”

source: http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=36786

As per ClearCanvas’ press release on their website they are also going to strive for further certification to allow their products to be used legally in the US & Canada.

“We've always taken pride in creating top quality software and this makes it official. In the coming months, we will be pursuing certifications from various regulatory bodies as well, including Health Canada and the FDA, so please stay tuned!”

source: http://www.clearcanvas.ca/dnn/Home/News/tabid/196/EntryId/65/Worlds-first-ISO-13485-certified-open-source-RIS-PACS.aspx

Well done to the ClearCanvas guys again for pushing the open source radiology software 1 step closer to being a reality for everyone! Keep up the good work and we are eagerly awaiting future news and software releases.

Feedback: 1st African PACS & RIS Edu-conference

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:49:00 +0000

The 1st African PACS & RIS Edu-conference was a fantastic event. I think the organisers put together a great show and taught the local PACS & RIS community a great many things.

I am so glad to know that there are that many Southern African people out there going through the same issues that we are. It was a real eye opener to share in the experiences of both private practice and that of government, who share some issues, but on the whole have very different outlooks on the systems at large.

The formation of a local organisation to address PACS & RIS issues was raised. I think this will be a great asset to the local community as it will give us a platform to communicate, educate and drive the industry forward.

Well done to the event organisers, it was great to be a part of the event and thank you for teaching us so much.

http://www.pacsrisafrica.com

ClearCanvas Workstation 1.5 SP1

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 06:06:00 +0000

ClearCanvas has released SP1 to address the bug in their software that affected the polygon ROI tool.

You can download the ClearCanvas Service Pack from the ClearCanvas website: http://www.clearcanvas.ca/

Original Post from ClearCanvas site: http://www.clearcanvas.ca/dnn/Home/News/tabid/196/EntryId/60/Workstation-1-5-SP1-Now-Available.aspx

More Microsoft Visio PACS Stencils

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:32:00 +0000

I have added some more Visio stencils for PACS drawings. (Previous post)
The collection now consists of the following: CT Scanner, MRI Scanner, CR, Cassettes and icons.

You can download the stencils from http://drop.io/pacsworld_visioStencil_01/

Radiology Visio Stencils

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:24:00 +0000

I was looking for a nice Microsoft Visio stencil for Radiology modalities online, but I could not find anything nice so I decided to make my own. I have only made a CT & MRI for now. I am busy making some other stencils as well. I hope to make CR, Cassettes, General X-Ray and maybe Mammo. Let me know if there is anything that anyone is looking for that I can make.

You can download the first draft stencil from this link.
I will see if I can draw some more and post them here.

Please give me some feedback.

1st African PACS & RIS Edu-conference

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 06:49:00 +0000

The 1st African PACS & RIS Edu-conference will be held at Stellenbosch University, Cape Town, South Africa 22-24 October 2009. You can view more information here.

http://www.pacsrisafrica.com

ClearCanvas Workstation 1.5 First Impressions

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:18:00 +0000

I have just downloaded and installed ClearCanvas Workstation 1.5. I installed the plain viewer (without the RIS client for now).

The thing that jump out at me at first are the following:

New Viewer Tools

Survey / Explode – Allows you to quickly switch between viewing a single image and multiple images.

Key Images – Allows you to view and create key images.

Magnification- Brings up a square magnifier block.

Show / Hide Overlays – Allows you to choose what information you wish to be displayed on the image.

Draw Shutter – Allows you to do software shuttering. Allows for Square, Round & Polygon shutters!

New Options

Service Management: You can now start and stop the clearcanvas services straight from the workstation GUI.

Default Servers: Not quite sure what this does yet.

Disk Space Manager: This seems like a nice utility for managing disk space for the dicom images.

It looks to me as though the ClearCanvas developers have once again put in a lot of effort and created some new very useful tools for the ClearCanvas Workstation. I think the addition of key images will be greatly appreciated by radiologists! I am going to install a trail on one of our departments and see how they feel about the changes.

ClearCanvas 1.5 Suite of Dicom Software Released

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 06:34:00 +0000

The ClearCanvas team has released the latest version of their suite of DICOM applications, Version 1.5.

The suite seems to have grown to include an install of the RIS server. I am busy downloading and will report back once I have had a chance to install and play with the applications. I am looking forward to testing the RIS side of things!

Check out ClearCanvas Workstation 1.5, ClearCanvas Dicom Server 1.5 and ClearCanvas RIS server 1.5 on http://www.clearcanvas.ca website which has a nice new look too!

The future of ClearCanvas

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:40:00 +0000

I got the following response from Norman over at ClearCanvas to clarify my speculation that a paid for version of ClearCanvas is on the way.

“ With respect to the ImageServer, it will ALWAYS continue to be an open source product. Same goes for the viewer and the RIS. One of our proprietary offerings is what we're calling the Enterprise Server, which amongst other things, provides our full suite of products (including the Workstation and ImageServer) centralized user management, roaming profiles and IHE compliant auditing. This is not an enterprise version of the ImageServer per se--it's really a separate product that the ImageServer can talk to. You don't need it to run the ImageServer. We probably need to be clearer about this in the docs.
The decision to offer proprietary products in the first place was not an easy one. Ideally we'd like to release everything as OSS--that reflects the spirit on which ClearCanvas was founded. But at the end of the day, we have to make sure we are sustainable as a company. While 95% of our code may be free (in the free beer sense), its development is not. We are a company of 17 highly experienced professionals who have engeineered RIS/PACS systems before and that costs real money. That means that we need to have a variety of revenue streams, including service/support, development consulting, and yes, traditional paid-for products. (We're primarily a development consulting shop right now.) To put all this into perspective, this is a pretty common open source business model these days, with companies such as SugarCRM, DotNetNuke, Kitware, etc., offering a small complement of proprietary, value-added products to their core open source product.”

So it seems as though ClearCanvas is still striving to keep the majority of the applications free and open source, but there will be a commercial arm with a separate product suite to pay the bills. Thank you very much for your response and clarification Norman. I am really glad to hear that ClearCanvas still intends to keep the spirit of OSS alive in its products. Keep up the good work guys. I am looking forward to seeing what's in store in version 1.5.

ClearCanvas moving away from Open Source?

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:53:00 +0000

ClearCanvas released the documentation to the community for review today. The documentation is for their upcoming software releases of ClearCanvas Workstation 1.5, ClearCanvas Image Server 1.5 and ClrearCanvas SDK 1.5.

Something interesting and concerning that I have noticed is that in the ImageServer User Guide under “Enterprise Version”. It would seem as though ClearCanvas may be making a “pay for” version of the image server software. I certainly hope this is not the case!

Anyway according to the documentation we can probably expect version 1.5 of ClearCanvas Workstation, Image Server and SDK before the end of July.

iPhone OS 3 Upgrade Woes

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:37:00 +0000

I keep getting "The iPhone 'iPhone' cannot be updated at this time because the iPhone activation server is temporarily unavailable" error.

I ran a packet sniffer and noted that iTunes is trying to connect to albert.apple.com.

I suspect that either access has been blocked to prevent overload or an overload has already take place. Either way it is messing me around as I want to play with the new iPhone OS 3

features before work tomorrow!

Oh well, off to bed. Hope the error is fixed by tomorrow!

edit: (15 minutes later)

It started to install after many many clicks on the Update button! Woohoo!

Windows Vista SP2

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 13:02:00 +0000

Today I accidentally found out that Windows Vista SP2 has been released! I was going through my WSUS server and noticed that my machine had a lot of updates outstanding. I then say an entry that said: "Windows Vista Serivce Pack 2 Standalone (KB948465)- English, French, German, Japanse, Spanish"

Well it looks like SP2 was released about 2 weeks ago according to this KB Article.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948465

Anyway I am waiting for my WSUS server to download it so I can install!

Google Wave Video

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Fri, 29 May 2009 07:27:00 +0000

This Google Wave thing is crazy! You have to watch this video ....

Google Wave

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Thu, 28 May 2009 17:31:00 +0000

The new idea from Google is Google Wave.

It seems as though Google has gone and decided to create a new means of organising and communicating in this crazy world we live in.

A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.
Taken from: The Official Google Blog

From what I can gather from the websites it appears as though Google Wave is a mish mash of email, instant messaging, document collaboration and it is all incorporated into a timeline. I think this could very well be the next big thing in communication, bending the rules and allowing for more effective communication and colaboration over the net.

Best of all they are going to release the code as open source! I love Google some days.
(I even named my dog Google)

Flex Viewer Development Moving Again

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Tue, 26 May 2009 08:48:00 +0000

I am restarting development on the Flex viewer system for conquest server. I have decided to focus my efforts on CR viewing for now. I am going to try and get this functioning as a complete tool for viewing images outside the department for non-diagnostic means.

I hope to release some more code to the sourceforge site as soon I have made some decent progress.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/conquestwebview/

Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:03:00 +0000

Ok, so I see that everyone else is on twitter these days so I guess i better keep up with the times. I am actually starting to get the hang of it. I initially thought is was a load of rubbish, but I think there may actually be something to this who Tweeting thing.

Anyway enough ranting if you are a twitter addict you can now check me out on:

http://twitter.com/pacsworld

Ecofont

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 08:06:00 +0000

What an amazing idea! Add some "holes" into a standard font to save on ink! Brilliant.

This is basically what ecofont is. It allows you to save as much as 20% on toner costs by cutting out some of the font. It is sort of similar to the concept of the MP3, cut out the bits that you dont need to bring the size of the file down, or in this case the toner costs! Check it out.

http://www.ecofont.eu/

What radiologists do when they are bored?

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:26:00 +0000

Well it would appear that they scan cheese burgers in the CT Scanner!
I found this site from a link on radzgirl.blogspot.com

I think this is really cool! I wish I could scan some other things in there!

Check out some of the video on the site, its amazing!

Vote Earth 2009

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:38:00 +0000

Flex Viewer Source Released

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:35:00 +0000

There has been quite a lot of interest in my Flex Viewer project that I started some time last year. I have finaly posted the initial source code on Source Forge.

http://conquestwebview.sourceforge.net/

Please note that I am no longer actively developing this application as I currently do not have the time. The practice I work for has finnaly made the decision to get PACS so I am up to my ears in project plans etc.

If anyone wants to get involved in the project the source code for both the flex and PHP side of the application is avialable on sourceforge. I would be happy to assist with any questions if any other developers want to continue with the project for now.

PACS and Hyper-V Server Virtualization?

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 11:48:00 +0000

Hyper-V is the Microsoft Server Virtualization product that comes standard with Windows 2008 Server. (There are a couple of other virtualization products, but Hyper-V is free with Windows 2008 server) I went to a presentation recently explaining Hyper-V, among other things. I have always though that server virtualization may be a good idea for a PACS implementation, but until recently I hadn't really given it too much thought.

Server virtualization basically means that you create 1 or more virtual servers on a physical server. i.e. There is some software that does some fancy magic to make it possible to install multiple operating systems on your computer as though they are a complete system on its own.

The major benefit of server virtualization that I can see is the fact that the server itself is in effect a file now when it is Virtual. You can take a snapshot of the server and copy it off to a new location. In the event of a massive failure, all you need to do is copy the file back and you will have you server running as it was when you took the snapshot!

This is obviously fantastic if you consider that you can make backups of your entire server with the click of a button just before a software upgrade and then test to see how it goes. If you are feeling really clever you can even take the snapshot of your server and re-boot it on another computer and test the software upgrade away from the live environment!

Another fantastic feature of server virtualisation is that you can run almost any operating system as a virtual server! So you can have one Windows 2008 Box that has Windows 2003, Windows 2000 and even a flavour of linux running on it all at the same time!

Virtual machines can also be migrated to new hardware much more easily as the snapshot of the server can be coppied to a new higher spec machine, more resource allocated to it and then turn it on and BAM! Server upgraded!

The downside to virtualization technology is that if you have one physical server running several virtual machines, then if you loose the one physical server due to hardware failure, you loose all the virtual servers running on that hardware.

You can setup some advanced configurations that will automatically fail-over to another server, but eventually you need to consider your risk appetite and your budget.

But I think virtualization is definetly something to look at if you are getting a new PACS system.

DHCP for DICOM?

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 06:30:00 +0000

I was driving to work this morning and I started thinking about how much it sucks to setup a new modality on our network. Every time something new comes along we have to contact every modality vendor and get them to add the new machines settings, because we are not given the usernames and passwords to add them ourselves. This means you need to contact about 5 different people and try and organise time on the modality. In the end it normally takes anything from 1 to 2 weeks to get everything communicating.

Wouldn't it be great if someone came up with a DHCP protocol for the DICOM standard that would allow for a centralised management area of all modalities and their configuration settings. Imagine adding a new modality to the network and all you have to do is give the technician the DCM-DHCP server details and boom! all your DICOM settings are downloaded to that machine. Then all you need to do is add the new modality to the DCM-DHCP server and all the other modalities can now communicate with it!

I don't think this would be difficult to implement and security could be added to prevent "rouge modalities" from entering the network. With a system of centralised DICOM configuration and management life would be a lot easier for everyone, including the vendors.

Augmented Reality in Radiology?

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:13:00 +0000

My brother in-law is studying to become an Architect and he showed me a cool technology called augmented reality. Effectively augmented reality allows for real-time image overlay of a 3D object in live video. (Sounds complicated, but check out the video below)

http://www.armedia.it/armedia/

http://www.inglobetechnologies.com/en/products.php

The tool on this website allows you to export 3D models from Google Sketchup and view them in a live video feed from your webcame. The 3D model is merged with the live video feed and placed on top of a marker printed on a piece of paper.

Imagine in future if something like this could be used as a presentation tool for Radiology. If a patient had a marker placed on them and they could then turn around and view live realtime video overlays of CT, MR or 4D Ultrasounds. I think it would really be a fantastic presentation medium to allow patients to see "inside themselves". The technology will probably not add any diagnostic value, but I am sure it would be great for patients!

Results: What PACS do you use

noreply@blogger.com (BigG) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:28:00 +0000

The results so far from my experimental online form as as follows:

Number of Responses: 21

Agfa IMPAX: 4

Amicas: 1

CareStream: 1

Centricity IW: 1

ClearCanvas: 2

Conquest: 5

Fuji Synapse: 3

Medcom: 1

OnePACS: 2

Philips iSite: 1