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Working in the Viewing Section ....................................................... 31 Adjusting the Viewing Section screen.............................................. 31 Using the Pictorial Index.................................................................. 32
I N T R OD U CI NG C E N T RI CIT Y RADIOL OG Y RA
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Scope, pinning and key images....................................................... 33 Windowing ....................................................................................... 35 Examining images in detail.............................................................. 36 Viewing cine loops ........................................................................... 37 Measuring and annotating images................................................... 38 Masks and overlays......................................................................... 41 Reporting ......................................................................................... 42 Going further.................................................................................... 44
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Ease of use...................................................................................... 12 The Data Selector............................................................................ 14 The Viewing Section........................................................................ 15 Advanced tools for viewing and diagnosis....................................... 17 Other parts of RA 600...................................................................... 18 Going further in this guide ............................................................... 19
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Finding studies in the Data Selector................................................ 22 Changing worklist views .................................................................. 22 Exploring your local view ................................................................. 23 Tracking down a study..................................................................... 23 Pinpointing studies with querying .................................................... 24 Creating a worklist view................................................................... 25 The Filing tooltab and folders .......................................................... 26 Remote views .................................................................................. 27 Importing studies ............................................................................. 28 Importing and viewing studies directly............................................. 28 Viewing studies................................................................................ 29 The Data Selector as a gateway to other parts of RA 600 .............. 30
F I ND I N G AN D O R GAN I Z I N G Y OU R D A T A ................................................ 45
The Data Selector screen................................................................ 46 Patient and study views................................................................... 48 Local and remote views................................................................... 49 Checking your hard disk space........................................................ 50 Removing studies from your local view ........................................... 50 Importing studies from remote view to hard disk ............................. 51 Hiding the Import dialog box............................................................ 51 Examining your patient and study lists ............................................ 52 Examining the series within a study................................................. 52 Examining the images within a series.............................................. 52
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Viewing detailed information down to image level ........................... 52 Exporting and printing study information using the clipboard .......... 53 Finding studies quickly using the keyboard ..................................... 54 Narrowing your search with sorting and filtering.............................. 55 Sorting ............................................................................................. 55 Extended sorting.............................................................................. 55 Filtering with the Data Selector tooltab............................................ 55 Selecting all the studies for a particular patient ............................... 56 Resetting your filters........................................................................ 57 Pinpointing your data with queries................................................... 58 Using Queries with sorting and filtering how it works ................... 59 Removing filters and queries with a single click .............................. 60 Including common sorts, filters and queries in worklist views.......... 61 Selecting studies and opening them for viewing ............................. 62 Selecting studies, series or images ................................................. 62 Opening studies for viewing ............................................................ 62 Viewing multiple studies .................................................................. 63 Using the Automatic buttons............................................................ 63 Manually selecting a hanging protocol ............................................ 64 Directly viewing studies with a remote view, DICOM server or DICOM volume ............................................................................................. 65 Working with folders ........................................................................ 66 Moving your studies between folders .............................................. 66 Saving hard disk space by compressing studies............................. 67 Automatically compressing all incoming studies.............................. 68 Protecting studies with delete locks................................................. 69 Seeing which studies are locked against deletion ........................... 69 Changing the status of studies ........................................................ 70 Seeing the status of studies in the Data Selector............................ 70 Displaying your worklist ................................................................... 70 Defining worklist view properties ..................................................... 71 Including sorts ................................................................................. 72 Adding filters.................................................................................... 73 About initial values........................................................................... 73
Centricity Radiology RA 600 V6.1 reference guide online
Defining queries............................................................................... 73 Highlighting parts of your worklist using fonts and colors ................ 74 Item types and DICOM hierarchy .................................................... 75 The order of the items in the list and how RA 600 displays lines .... 75 Managing your remote views........................................................... 77 Changing patient and study list headers.......................................... 79 Modifying columns........................................................................... 79 Arranging the order of columns in your study list............................. 80
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I M A G E S ......... 81
The Viewing Section screen ............................................................ 82 The Pictorial Index in detail.............................................................. 83 Series and study headers in the Pictorial Index............................... 83 Expanding and collapsing series in the Pictorial Index.................... 83 Viewing multiple studies in the Pictorial Index ................................. 84 Sorting the images in the Pictorial Index ......................................... 85 Previewing images in the Pictorial Index ......................................... 85 Using the Pictorial Index to navigate ............................................... 85 Resizing the Pictorial Index ............................................................. 85 Customizing the Pictorial Index ....................................................... 85 The active viewport.......................................................................... 87 Configuring viewports ...................................................................... 88 Using the Layout tooltab to select layouts ....................................... 88 Selecting layouts with the right mouse button menu ....................... 88 Defining a layout with series and viewport areas............................. 89 Filling the viewport areas with images............................................. 89 Undoing actions while viewing images ............................................ 90 Setting the Scope of your changes.................................................. 91 Setting the Scope to a selection of viewports.................................. 91 Working with presentation states..................................................... 92 Creating presentation states............................................................ 92 Modifying presentation states.......................................................... 93 Viewing a presentation state............................................................ 94
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Defining Windowing parameters...................................................... 95 Windowing images .......................................................................... 96 Windowing with the mouse.............................................................. 96 Windowing and Scope..................................................................... 96 Windowing using the tooltab............................................................ 97 Using the slider bar.......................................................................... 97 Directly entering exact values for level and width............................ 97 Using pre-defined settings............................................................... 97 Creating and saving pre-defined windowing settings ...................... 98 Creating pre-defined windowing settings for body parts.................. 98 Using non-linear windowing functions ............................................. 99 Optimizing parts of images using regions of interest (ROIs)......... 100 Inverting images ............................................................................ 100 Pseudo colors (palette).................................................................. 101 Panning ......................................................................................... 102 Quick browsing with the Up and Down buttons and keyboard ...... 103 Configuring buttons in the Viewing Section ................................... 103 Using the keyboard for quick browsing.......................................... 104 Scope settings and browsing......................................................... 105 Pinning images .............................................................................. 106 Key notes....................................................................................... 107 Creating key notes......................................................................... 107 Saving key notes ........................................................................... 108 Modifying or removing key notes................................................... 108 Viewing key notes.......................................................................... 109 Automatically sending key notes ................................................... 110 Zooming and the magnifying glass................................................. 111 Quick zoom shortcut....................................................................... 111 Zooming in fixed steps.................................................................... 111 Zooming with the slider................................................................... 111 Relative, absolute and true size ..................................................... 111 Zoom quality .................................................................................. 112 The magnifying glass..................................................................... 112 Flipping and rotating images.......................................................... 113 Enhancing images with filters ........................................................ 114 Using filter sets and custom filters................................................. 115 Creating cine loops........................................................................ 116 Automatic cine loops...................................................................... 116 Using tags to make precise selections of images.......................... 117 Manually controlled cine loops (stack-mode displays)................... 118 Using the right mouse button to run cine loops ............................. 118 Synchronizing cine loops............................................................... 119 Selecting the master cine .............................................................. 119 Starting and linking cines by selecting multiple viewports ............. 119 Linking methods for cines.............................................................. 120 Changing the offset of linked cines................................................ 120 Annotating images......................................................................... 122 Patient annotation.......................................................................... 122 Adding markers.............................................................................. 122 Annotating with text ....................................................................... 123 Keeping your annotations appearance settings............................ 123 Cutting, copying and removing annotation .................................... 123 Saving your annotation.................................................................. 124 Showing and hiding your annotation.............................................. 124 Pre-defined text annotations.......................................................... 125 Showing and hiding image overlays .............................................. 126 Making measurements on your images......................................... 127 Using probes.................................................................................. 127 Working with calipers..................................................................... 127 Measuring distances...................................................................... 128 Viewing profiles.............................................................................. 129 Measuring angles .......................................................................... 130 Creating regions of interest (ROIs) ............................................... 130 Viewing ROI information ................................................................ 131 Exporting ROI information ............................................................. 131 Saving your measurements........................................................... 132
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Moving and copying annotations between viewports .................... 133 Copying annotation........................................................................ 133 Moving annotation ......................................................................... 133 Using labels to ease reporting ....................................................... 134 Including user information ............................................................. 135 Creating and using masks and overlays........................................ 136 Masks and overlay areas, and how to draw them ......................... 136 Showing, hiding and removing masks and overlays...................... 137 Copying and pasting masks and overlays ..................................... 137 Moving masks and overlays between viewports............................ 138 Saving masks ................................................................................ 138 Adding and adjusting overlay images............................................ 138 Windowing overlays....................................................................... 139 Changing the transparency of an overlay image ........................... 139 Synchronizing overlay image quality ............................................. 140 Using plug-ins................................................................................ 141 Structured reports.......................................................................... 143 Viewing the Reports window.......................................................... 143 Creating a report............................................................................ 143 Configuring structured reports ....................................................... 145 Setting where and how the reports window is displayed ............... 145 Reporting profiles .......................................................................... 145 Assigning reporting profiles to study statuses ............................... 146 Exporting and printing single images............................................. 147 Copying to the clipboard................................................................ 147 TIFF export .................................................................................... 147 Printing single images ................................................................... 147 Presentation sheets....................................................................... 149 Changing the status of your studies .............................................. 151 Configuring study statuses ............................................................ 152 Setting permissions to change study status .................................. 152 Going further with viewing ............................................................. 153 Comparing studies and series ....................................................... 156 Selecting multiple studies and series............................................. 156 Viewing selected studies and series.............................................. 156 Creating your own viewport layouts............................................... 157 Placing your images in the viewports ............................................ 157 The importance of Scope............................................................... 157 Pinning combinations..................................................................... 158 Comparing cine loops.................................................................... 158 Working with multi-frame images................................................... 159 The Pictorial Index and viewing multi-frame images ..................... 159 Viewing multi-frames as cines ....................................................... 160 Viewing and manipulating individual frames in multi-frames ......... 161 Printing multi-frame images........................................................... 161 Teleradiology.................................................................................. 162 Displaying cutlines......................................................................... 163 Displaying a set of cutlines ............................................................ 163 Criteria for determining cutlines..................................................... 164 Customizing the display of cutlines................................................ 164 Using cutlines to select images ..................................................... 165 Viewing multiple sets of cutlines .................................................... 166 Printing and saving cutlines........................................................... 166 Working with collages .................................................................... 167 Creating collages........................................................................... 167 Presenting collages ....................................................................... 168 Sending collages to a specific destination..................................... 168 What is not saved with collages..................................................... 168 Putting studies on hold to view a second study (STAT exam) ..... 170 Viewing images as they arrive ....................................................... 171 Directly viewing studies in a remote view or archive ..................... 171 Viewing worklist items that are not local ........................................ 171 If you dont want your Viewing Section updated... ......................... 172 Limitations when using direct view ................................................ 172
Centricity Radiology RA 600 V6.1 reference guide online
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V I E W I N G 155
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Monitoring mode............................................................................ 173 Working with hanging protocols..................................................... 174 Using hanging protocols (or selecting a different layout)............... 174 Managing automated hanging protocols ....................................... 175 Disabling and removing automated hanging protocols.................. 175 Disabling all automated hanging protocols and displaying the best 176 Importing and exporting automated hanging protocols ................. 176 Creating and modifying automated hanging protocols .................. 176 The Hanging Protocol Editor in detail ............................................ 178 Creating the layout ........................................................................ 178 Assigning hang criteria .................................................................. 179 Assigning area properties.............................................................. 179 How to see what hang criteria and properties you have applied ... 180 Assigning general viewing modes ................................................. 181 Fine tuning your hanging protocols ............................................... 181 Determining which automated hanging protocol RA 600 will use.. 181 Default hanging protocols.............................................................. 182 Managing your default hanging protocols...................................... 182 Creating and modifying default hanging protocols ........................ 182 Changing the order of default layout buttons................................. 182 Importing and exporting default hanging protocols........................ 183 Viewing images at their true size ................................................... 184
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Rotating your view in steps............................................................ 192 Creating MPR and MIP cine loops................................................. 194 Setting up cine loops with Quick Setup ......................................... 194 Setting up MPR/MIP cines in detail ............................................... 195 Viewing your cines......................................................................... 195 Speed versus image quality........................................................... 197 Setting the pixel range................................................................... 197 Using range presets....................................................................... 197 Using volumes of interest (VOIs) .................................................. 198 Enhancing, measuring and annotating images.............................. 199 Using the Pictorial Index for MPR/MIP .......................................... 200 Adding MPR/MIP images to the Pictorial Index............................. 200 Loading images into the MPR/MIP (oblique) viewport................... 200 Add oblique or current image?....................................................... 201 Saving your MPR/MIP images....................................................... 202 Saving images or transferring them to the Viewing Section .......... 202 Saving cine loops........................................................................... 203
S E N D I NG A N D R E C E I V I N G D A T A ........ 205
What you need for teleradiology.................................................... 206 Receiving series and studies......................................................... 207 Looking to see what you have received......................................... 207 Deleting entries in your receive log................................................ 208 Exporting (saving) your receive log ............................................... 208 Monitoring the receive process...................................................... 209 Sending images using the Data Selector....................................... 210 Working with study management................................................... 212 Monitoring and controlling the send process ................................. 214 Setting priorities and sending in an emergency............................. 215 Setting the default priority of send jobs.......................................... 215 Sending a job immediately in an emergency................................. 216 Looking in detail at what you have sent......................................... 218
Starting MPR and MIP................................................................... 187 Selecting series ............................................................................. 187 The MPR/MIP screen .................................................................... 187 Manipulating your view .................................................................. 189 Moving the cross hairs in the orthogonal viewports....................... 189 Dragging in the MPR/MIP viewport ............................................... 190 Looking at slices through your MPR/MIP view .............................. 192 Stepping through the image volume.............................................. 192
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Deleting entries in your send log ................................................... 218 Exporting (saving) your send log ................................................... 218 Sending from the Viewing Section................................................. 220 Compression in teleradiology ........................................................ 222 Lossless or lossy compression?.................................................... 222 The compression options .............................................................. 222 JPEG and Wavelet what compression factor? ........................... 223 How to tell if lossy compression has been used when receiving studies 224 Sending studies automatically ....................................................... 225 Automatically locking and unlocking studies ................................. 226 Unlocking individual studies when you send them ........................ 226 Redirecting images to a backup site.............................................. 227 Storage commitment ..................................................................... 228 Setting a time-out value................................................................. 229
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Automatically adding patient information using a previous study .. 244 Using worklists to enter patient information................................... 245 Using a RIS system to add patient information.............................. 245 Mandatory patient information ....................................................... 245 Saving your study .......................................................................... 246 Automatically sending acquired studies to another system........... 246 Selecting which folder acquired studies are saved in.................... 246 Using compression when saving studies....................................... 246 Specific device support.................................................................. 247
ADVANCED 249
PRINTING .
Printing series and studies with the Data Selector ........................ 250 Fine tuning settings in the Print Study dialog box.......................... 251 Monitoring and controlling the print process.................................. 253 Finding out which printers are available ........................................ 254 Reviewing what you have printed.................................................. 255 Reprinting a job that has already been printed.............................. 255 Removing entries in your print log ................................................. 255 Exporting (saving) your print log.................................................... 255 Printing while viewing images........................................................ 257 Printing a single image or viewport................................................ 257 Printing using virtual film sheets .................................................... 257 Adding to and modifying your virtual film sheet ............................. 258 Modifying the images on your virtual film sheet............................. 258 Multiple film sheets ........................................................................ 259 Printing your virtual film sheet(s) ................................................... 259 Creating custom print layouts ........................................................ 260
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An overview of the acquisition process ......................................... 232 The acquisition screen................................................................... 234 The Patient Information dialog box................................................ 234 Acquiring an image........................................................................ 236 Adding images directly to the Pictorial Index................................. 236 Controlling acquisition devices within RA 600 ............................... 237 Pre-defining image formats (image types)..................................... 238 Using the clipboard and directly importing files ............................. 240 Importing graphics files.................................................................. 240 Manipulating and refining your images.......................................... 241 Saving only parts of images using ROIs........................................ 241 Creating studies using various acquisition types........................... 242 Organizing your images................................................................. 243 Adding patient information............................................................. 244 Adding patient information manually ............................................. 244
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Single Media Archive..................................................................... 262 Setting up RA 600 to copy data to your media .............................. 262
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Copying data to a single archive medium...................................... 266 Viewing images with the RA 600 CD Viewer ................................. 268 Setting up RA 600 for viewing from your media ............................ 269 Indexing studies............................................................................. 270 Managing your media with the Index Tool ..................................... 271 Lending out studies ....................................................................... 271 Removing (deleting) volumes ........................................................ 272 Querying for volumes and studies ................................................. 273 Displaying the volumes of studies ................................................. 273
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What about empty studies and series?.......................................... 287 Moving images between series using drag and drop .................... 288 Windowing, annotating, flipping and rotating................................. 289 Saving studies and changing study status..................................... 290 Reverting the status of a study ...................................................... 290 Automatically sending studies after saving them........................... 291 Setting which demographics can be edited ................................... 292
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C U S T OM I Z I N G 295
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Making changes while using RA 600............................................. 296 Resetting your window positions ................................................... 296 Configuring your toolbars............................................................... 297 Showing, hiding and changing the look of your toolbars ............... 297 Creating your own toolbars............................................................ 297 Changing the buttons on your toolbars.......................................... 298 Creating keyboard shortcuts.......................................................... 299 Using special commands for changing study status...................... 300 Configuring right mouse button (pop-up) menus ........................... 302 Custom tooltabs, menus and right mouse button menus .............. 303 Customizing your fonts in RA 600 ................................................. 304 Fonts in your Data Selector patient and study lists (worklist views) 304 Image annotation fonts .................................................................. 305 Working quickly with RA 600 ......................................................... 306 Toolbars and buttons ..................................................................... 306 The double-click............................................................................. 306 Keyboard shortcuts and special commands.................................. 307 Mouse / keyboard combinations.................................................... 307 Right mouse button menus............................................................ 307
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The Quality Control tooltab in the Data Selector ........................... 277 Viewing study status histories........................................................ 277 The quality control indicators......................................................... 277 Starting quality control ................................................................... 278 Opening a copy of a study............................................................. 278 The Quality Control screen............................................................ 279 Editing patient demographics ........................................................ 281 Viewing the study status history .................................................... 281 Matching studies automatically...................................................... 282 Matching all incoming studies automatically.................................. 282 Adding, rearranging and removing data ........................................ 283 Rearranging images within a series .............................................. 283 Removing images and series ........................................................ 283 Adding and combining images and series..................................... 283 Renumbering images .................................................................... 284 Changing patient orientation.......................................................... 284 What are correct values for patient orientation?............................ 284 Splitting and joining series and studies ......................................... 286 Selecting images in the Pictorial Index.......................................... 286 Placing selected images in a new series or study ......................... 286 Splitting using contrast or echo time.............................................. 287 Combining images into new series or studies ............................... 287
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Sending a report ............................................................................ 313 Looking at two studies ................................................................... 314
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Preparing studies for viewing by a doctor...................................... 317 Sending a report ............................................................................ 319 Printing viewport images ............................................................... 320
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AGREEMENT
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Foreword
edical facilities around the world continue to introduce RA 600 into their workflow. In fact, RA 600 stations continue to be installed in hospitals on every continent.
We believe the success of our product is attributable to the ease with which it allows radiologists, doctors and radiographic technologists to view medical images using the familiar Windows user interface. Perhaps the most important step weve taken in this direction is the introduction of presentation states, structured reports, key notes and study statuses that can be sent over a hospital network. You can now edit an image, draw up a new report, create a set of key notes or simply change the status of a study and send only the changes over the hospital network - without all the accompanying images. One advantage of this is a more flexible workflow. Another is a decrease in the bandwidth the PACS requires, which will inevitably reduce the traffic on a hospitals network and therefore increase the availability of IT resources. In a time in which health care is spanning greater physical distances, this can only be good. We hope that you continue to find RA 600 valuable in your work. The development team Zeist, The Netherlands September 2002
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Ease of use ..............................................................12 The Data Selector ....................................................14 The Viewing Section ................................................15 Advanced tools for viewing and diagnosis ...............17 Other parts of RA 600 ..............................................18 Going further in this guide ........................................19
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The Centricity Radiology RA 600 workstation or software is not to be used for the final interpretation of digital mammography examinations. Final interpretation should be performed using the laser-printed digital images only.
entricity Radiology RA 600 is a PC-based medical viewing system designed for routine use at locations inside and outside a hospital or other institution. It runs under Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP with the same user interface as is familiar to millions of PC users. RA 600 lets you load, display and manipulate virtually any medical image or patient study that may consist of an individual or a series of digital images. With it, you can import CT, MR, X-ray, Digital X-ray (DX), Digital Mammography X-Ray (MG), Digital Intra-oral X-ray (IO), XA, NM, RF, US multiframe, CR and many other types of image, either from a digital outlet or via secondary capture (e.g. digitized or frame-grabbed images). It also supports monochrome through to 24-bit true-color images, thereby allowing the clinical use of it in many application areas outside the Radiology department. The versatility of RA 600 means that computerized diagnostic imaging can be applied at almost any location inside or outside the hospital - even at home. The PCs involved can also be used for many other tasks that may or may not be related to medical imaging, such as word processing and HIS functions. In addition to displaying images for diagnosis and reporting, a full RA 600 system can cover many other areas, such as image acquisition, archiving, teleradiology, printing, 3D imaging and quality control.
Ease of use
Centricity Radiology RA 600 comes with comprehensive on-line help for every aspect of using the software. Press F1, any Help button or select Help from the menu bar to find out more while using RA 600.
RA 600 is designed to combine its powerful functionality with ease of use for everyone, even those without extensive experience of using a computer. All the features of RA 600 can be found on tooltabs which are highly characteristic of RA 600. These group together and provide rapid access to functions in specific areas such as windowing, annotation, teleradiology etc. As with other Windows applications, you can use the menu bars to perform your tasks with RA 600, although you will often find it much quicker to use the mouse, keyboard shortcuts or toolbar buttons for many tasks, especially those you perform frequently. A little time spent becoming familiar with using these will pay dividends in terms of your speed and efficiency.
13 For example, dragging with the right mouse button performs functions such as windowing, while a single click with this button reveals a pop-up menu with all kinds of options for commonly performed tasks in the particular part of RA 600 you happen to be in. The tool buttons, which are arranged on fully configurable toolbars, can be dragged to any side of the screen and used to perform frequent tasks with a single click of the mouse. Finally, RA 600 lets you assign keyboard shortcuts to perform common tasks simply by pressing a particular key combination. Apart from customizing your toolbars and keyboard shortcuts to your particular needs, you can show or hide particular parts of the screen, such as the Pictorial Index and reporting window, and move these elements to the part of the screen where you prefer them. Again, spending a little time setting up RA 600 to your own personal needs and preferences will allow you to use it even more easily and quickly.
Even if you are just one of a number of users of the RA 600 workstation, you can freely customize it without risk of inconveniencing other users - RA 600 remembers all the custom settings for each individual user and will use your own particular settings when you log on.
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In some configurations, the Data Selector may be supplied with information from a worklist source.
This always appears when you first start RA 600 and when you have finished viewing a study. It lets you manage your images and patient studies and load them from local or remote DICOM 3.0 compliant storage devices. The Data Selector can be configured to use worklists from a HIS or RIS system, for example. It shows configurable lists of studies that can be sorted and filtered according to various criteria such as modality, acquisition date, type of study, etc. Within the Data Selector you can call up all the available DICOM 3.0 information on the patient, study, series, and individual images. It lets you manage the status of individual studies, and also to keep them in separate folders, to delete ones that have been reviewed or to send them to remote storage devices if RA 600 is connected to them. The Data Selector also gives you access to other modules of RA 600 that have been installed on your system, such as acquisition or archiving.
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The Viewing Section, with tool bars (just below the menu bar), Pictorial Index (left), tooltabs (right), viewport area for viewing images (center), reporting window (bottom center left) and mini version of the Data Selector (bottom center right)
The center of the screen consists of viewports, each of which will contain a single image from your series or study. You can have just a single viewport, or a whole array of them of various sizes. All kinds of layouts for your viewports are possible. Depending on the procedures in your organization and how RA 600 has been configured, studies may be opened using pre-defined hanging protocols thereby automatically being displayed in just the way they should be. You can also select alternative viewport arrangements for particular tasks such as comparing studies and series, and even define your own if RA 600 does not provide exactly what you need.
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16 chapter 1 The Viewing Section provides powerful tools for viewing and diagnosis. You can window images according to numerous methods (various look-up tables are provided and others can be defined). You can also zoom in for a close look at any image (or use a magnifying glass which you can drag over the image). You can invert, flip or rotate your images. Filters provide various image enhancements for revealing specific features within your images. Cine loops are a valuable diagnostic tool. With RA 600, you can have multiple cines running at the same time and even synchronize them. They can generally be set up with just a couple of clicks of the mouse. Many kinds of measurement facilities are provided, from probes to regions of interest and profiles. You can also add various annotations, such as overlays over the images (text and markers pointing out particular features for example). Yet another valuable feature of the Viewing Section is the ability to pin (freeze) an image in a viewport, which is very useful when comparing images and series. Particular images in a study can also be designated as key images (key notes), allowing just these images to be displayed when the study is viewed. You can create reports and save them while viewing your images.
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18 chapter 1
Although RA 600 will most often be used for finding and viewing images, it is designed to provide a complete solution for virtually all medical imaging needs. The ability to send and receive images over phone lines and networks is an increasingly important aspect of medical imaging. RA 600 provides comprehensive facilities in the field of teleradiology. Getting images from a scanner, frame grabber or other imaging device into RA 600 (and then onto a hospital network perhaps) is another vital aspect. RA 600 offers full acquisition capabilities. For hard copy, powerful features for routinely printing whole series and studies are needed. RA 600 provides all that is required for this, as well as the ability to compose and print sets of images on the fly while viewing them. Archiving images so that they are stored safely and can be quickly retrieved is essential. RA 600 allows archives of images to be created and maintained using various types of media. An RA 600 system can be turned into a full quality control workstation, acting as a gatekeeper between an acquisition device and a hospitals network to ensure that acquired images are correct and are assigned the proper patient information.
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C H A P T E R
Getting started
If youre new to RA 600, run through the step-by-step instructions in this chapter to gain quick hands-on experience of performing some of the most common tasks.
I N T H I S C H A P T E R
Finding studies in the Data Selector ........................22 Changing worklist views...........................................22 Creating a worklist view ...........................................25 The Filing tooltab and folders...................................26 Remote views...........................................................27 Importing studies......................................................28 Working in the Viewing Section................................31 Using the Pictorial Index ..........................................32 Scope, pinning and key images ...............................33 Windowing................................................................35 Viewing cine loops ...................................................37 Measuring and annotating images ...........................38 Masks and overlays .................................................41 Reporting..................................................................42
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22 chapter 2
Your system will most likely contain important medical data. You are advised to use the sample studies to explore and familiarize yourself with RA 600. When you leave the Viewing Section you should click No when asked if you want to save changes - especially if you are using other studies. It is assumed that the sample studies provided with RA 600 were installed along with RA 600 on your system. If not, you can probably use different studies than the ones named in the procedures.
or newcomers to Centricity Radiology RA 600, this chapter introduces some main parts of the software and typical activities you might undertake, such as finding a particular study, opening it for viewing, examining it and writing a report. By spending just a few minutes going through the procedures in this chapter, you will have a quick introduction to many of the key features of RA 600 and hopefully gain an idea of how you might go about using it in your particular line of work.
RA 600 always opens by showing the Data Selector. You use this to find and open studies to view, or perhaps to go to another part of RA 600.To locate studies, you use the Data Selector tooltab. This will generally be on top when RA 600 first opens. To bring it to the top and view it at any time, simply click the tab with this icon.
23 3 Go back to the Data Selector tooltab, and select Local Patients from the drop-down list near the top of the tooltab. The center of the screen will change to show a list of patients, with each patient indicated by this icon.
By default, the Worklist View drop-down list also displays the Today, Unread and Unverified worklists which show selections of studies of the types they their names describe.
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24 chapter 2 3 Click in the small box (check box) next to MR. A check mark will appear in the box and the local view will show a number of studies again. Note that these are all MR studies (in fact all the MR studies that are on your local system). You can also filter according to the origin of the study (which system it came to your system from). Click in the check boxes next to whatever origins you might have and see how your local view changes to show only those studies that are from particular origins. Note also that the studies are still all MR. The modality filter remains in effect. Do the same for the folders which are on your system. Finally, since filters remain in effect until you remove them, click on the All buttons on the Data Selector tooltab and ensure that all the check boxes on the tooltab have ticks inside them. You will now have cleared all the filters and be able to view all your studies again.
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The asterisk is an example of a wildcard that lets you specify parts of names, etc. that can be anything for the purposes of the query. Barnsley* will therefore find all patients with the surname Barnsley, including those with different initials.
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With RA 600 you can create and use many different types of views of the information stored on your local computer. These are called worklist views. If your system is connected to a HIS/RIS and has been so configured, these worklist views may be actual worklists. If not, you can create and use them to display only some of the studies on your system, such as those which have just been received or those of a particular modality for example. 1 2 Select Database Data Selector. Add View from the menu bar at the top of the
Type CT only in the Description field of the Add view dialog box and select (if necessary) Local Studies from List drop-down list and Local Studies from the Copy Settings from drop-down list. Click OK. You have now created a new worklist view that you can view by selecting it from the Worklist View drop-down list. At the moment your new worklist view is identical to your Local Studies worklist view (the settings were copied from it). To make your new worklist view useful, you need modify its properties (customize it). To do this, select the new CT worklist view from the Worklist View drop-down list and then Database View Properties from the menu bar at the top of the Data Selector. A rather complex-looking dialog box called Configure View will appear (described in full in chapter 3!). What you need to do is have RA 600 apply a filter to show only CT studies each time you open this worklist view. Click on the line that starts with Modality in the Filters section to select it. Then click the Edit button below it. In the Filter dialog box that appears, click inside the Initial values box and type CT. Then click OK to close the Filter dialog box and OK again to close the Configure View dialog box. Note that your worklist view now shows only those studies of type CT. To remove your new worklist, make sure it has been selected from the Worklist View drop-down list. Then select Database Delete View the menu bar at the top of the Data Selector and select the worklist. Confirm the deletion by clicking Yes in the Delete view confirmation box.
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Look at the display at the top of the tooltab. This shows you how much disk space you have left. (Medical imaging data can take up a lot of space and fill up your systems hard disk quite quickly. The display gives you an early warning of when you might need to remove or archive some studies.) Go to the Folders section and click the New button. A New Folder dialog box appears on your screen. Click in the field next to Folder and type a name (such as My Folder). Then click on the OK button. You will see that a folder with the name that you typed in the Folders window on the Filing tooltab. Click on one of the Centricity Radiology RA 600 study cases (if these were installed on your system). This will select it (it should appear highlighted in blue). Click with the right mouse button on the line which is highlighted. A (pop-up) menu will appear. Move the mouse pointer to Move to Folder on the menu. A submenu will appear showing the name that you typed in previously. Click on this name (with the left mouse button). A Move Data box will appear. Click on OK to confirm that you want to move the data (study). Go back to the Data Selector tooltab (click on the tab with this icon). Filter on the new folder you created (make sure the box next to it is the only one in Folder section with a tick in it). The study you moved should be the only one which appears in your local view. Move the study back by clicking on it in your local view to highlight it. Right click and this time select Move to folder General. Click OK to confirm the move in the Move Data box. Finally, remove the filter by clicking the All button at the bottom of the Folder section on the Data Selector tooltab.
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Remote views
The filing tooltab lets you select which remote views will appear in the center of your screen. A remote view lets you look at studies which are on other systems connected to yours via a network. 1
The indicators will appear different on monochrome monitors (circles with and without a cross inside).
Click on the tab with this icon to bring the Filing tooltab to the top. Look at the check box at the top of the section called Remote Views. If it is not checked, click on it. A check mark should now appear inside it. In the area immediately below the check box, you should see a number of remote views which have been configured for your system. (If you cannot see any remote views, you may have a stand-alone system, or possibly your remote views have not been configured yet. You should then skip this section.) Look at the center of your screen. You should have your local view at the top, but beneath this a second window showing one of your remote views. If you have a number of remote views, you will see tabs at the bottom of this lower (remote view) window. Click on each tab in turn to see each remote view. After a moment, the indicator light on the left at the top of this lower window should turn from red to green, indicating that a connection has been properly established. (If it stays red, you should consult your system administrator). Initially, you will quite possibly not see any studies in your remote view windows. This is because the remote systems could contain a great many studies and it can take some time to get the information on them all. To show the studies in a remote view, you should perform a query. An empty (show all) query will show you all the studies available on the remote system. To do this, click within the remote view window to ensure that it is the active window (tell RA 600 this is the window you are working in). Then click the Query button on the Data Selector tooltab. Without entering anything in the Query Parameters box, click OK. All the studies in the remote database should be displayed.
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Importing studies
When you import studies from a remote view to your local view, they remain on the remote system (the studies are copied, not moved). This means that you can safely remove (delete) the study you import without destroying any data.
All the studies you see in your remote view are on another system. To be able to display the information contained in these studies efficiently, RA 600 needs to get the information from your local hard disk, since this will be faster than trying to get the information over the network. This means that when you want to view a study which is in your remote view, you should import it first. 1 2 Click on a study in one of your remote views that you want to import. Click on this study with the right mouse button to reveal a pop-up menu and select Import. In the Import Data box which appears, click OK. When importing is completed, you will see the study appear in your local view (the window in the upper part of your screen) ready for viewing.
In fact, you do not have to explicitly import studies to your local view before viewing them. Provided your system has been configured for Direct View, when you right-clicked in your remote view, you will have seen another item on the pop-up menu - View. If you use this rather than import, RA 600 will import the images and display them as they arrive. This acts as a shortcut for importing a study and then viewing it, with the added bonus that you do not need to wait for all images to arrive before you can start viewing them. Right-click on a study in your remote view and select View from the pop-up menu. The Viewing Section of RA 600 will open, and, if you are using DICOM format, as the images arrive they will appear one by one in the Pictorial Index on the left. Depending on the image format used, the Pictorial Index will update with all the images when the last one has arrived. Click the Back button in the bottom right corner to return to the Data Selector.
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Viewing studies
Once you have a study in your local view, you can open it for viewing in a number of ways. The quickest is to double click on it, but you can also use the Viewing tooltab (with this icon), the right mouse button menu, or the menu bar. 1 Double click on any of the studies in your local view. The study will open in the Viewing Section of RA 600, which lets you look in detail at images, add annotation, write reports and much more. We will look at this in more detail later. For now, click the Back button located below the tooltabs. This will return you to the Data Selector. Click the tab with this icon to bring the Viewing tooltab to the top. This contains a number of layout buttons for viewing studies. They indicate how the viewports will be laid out when a study is opened. The thicker lines on the buttons indicate how the screen will be divided up in areas for displaying separate series contained in a study. Click on a study in your local view to select it, and click on one of the buttons on the Viewing tooltab. The study will open in the Viewing Section. Notice that the layout of the viewports in the center of the screen matches the layout of the button you clicked. Click on the Back button and then on No in the Save As dialog box to return to the Data Selector and try out some of the other buttons. You will have seen the button labelled Automatic at the top of the View section on the Viewing tooltab. If you use this button instead of clicking one of the layout buttons, RA 600 will automatically calculate how best to show the particular series you have selected. In addition, with RA 600 you can select a number of studies in the Data Selector and then view them either simultaneously or one after the other without having to return to the Data Selector each time. To try this, select a range of studies in your local view (click on the first study in the range and then, while holding down the Shift key, on the last study in the range). The range of studies should now be highlighted. Click the Automatic button in the View section of the Viewing tooltab. RA 600 will display a message pointing out that you selected multiple studies for viewing and ask you whether you want to view them simultaneously. This offers you the choice of viewing all the studies at the same time, or viewing them one after the other in the Viewing Section.
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30 chapter 2 7 Select Yes. RA 600 will display a message warning that the items you selected are from different patients. Click OK to view the studies. One study will display in the viewport, while the others appear as thumbnails in the Pictorial Index ready for easy access. Click the Back button to return to the Data Selector. Repeat step 6, but this time select No, when asked whether you want to view the images simultaneously. RA 600 will place the first images of the first study in the viewport and display the full range of images in the Pictorial Index. Click the Next and Prev buttons in the Viewing Section to move from one study to another. Note how RA 600 automatically selects the most appropriate layout for the study (if the layouts are the same, the studies you selected must have a lot in common). Click the Back button to return to the Data Selector.
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Double click on the RA 600 sample study for Bailey, Nicole in your local view in the Data Selector. (If you cannot find this study, double-click on another study which preferably includes two or more series.) The Viewing Section will open to display the images in the study you clicked on. This screen has a number of key elements. The Pictorial Index displays miniature views of all the images that were opened for viewing. The center of the screen contains a number of viewports in which some of your images are displayed. The tooltabs provide you with everything you need to examine images in detail, measure and annotate them, create cine loops and much more. You may also see a Reports window (where you can create a report while viewing your images) and a Data Selector window (which is a smallscale view of your local studies as shown in the Data Selector). Click the tab with the Swiss Army knife icon. In the Windows section of the tooltab, you will see three check boxes: Show Pictorial Index, Show Data Selector and Show Reports. Click in each of the check boxes in turn to show or hide the screen elements. Before leaving this tooltab, make sure all the check boxes are checked (have a check mark inside them) and that the Reports window, your Data Selector window and Pictorial Index are all displayed. Move your mouse pointer to the border between the Pictorial Index and the viewports in the center of your screen. The mouse pointer should change to a double arrow . Click the left mouse button and hold it down. Then move the pointer to the left and right to resize the width of the Pictorial Index. Do the same with the tooltabs and Reports window. You should find that you can resize all of these elements.
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32 chapter 2 4 Move the mouse pointer until it is over the two gray lines at the top of the Pictorial Index. Click with the left mouse button and, holding the button down, drag the mouse pointer towards the opposite side of the screen. You will find you can drag the Pictorial Index across to the opposite side, allowing you to choose whether you have it on the left or right. You can also position the Pictorial Index at the top or bottom of the screen in the same way. Click on the two gray lines at the top of the tooltabs and do the same thing. Click on the gray lines of the Reports and Data Selector windows and drag these to relocate them on the screen. Finally, place the Pictorial Index so it is on the left, the Reports and Data Selector windows at the bottom of the screen and the tooltabs on the right.
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The active viewport is effectively the viewport in which you are currently working. By choosing an appropriate Scope setting, you can restrict changes you make to the active viewport or have them apply to all the images in a series or study. You will be able to use the All radio button if you have opted to view more than one study in the Viewing Section screen.
Click on the bottom left viewport. Note how the viewport becomes highlighted to indicate it has been selected, or that it is now the active viewport. Click on one of the images in the second series towards the bottom of the Pictorial Index. Note that the images shown in the lower two viewports have changed. In fact, the viewport you previously clicked on (the active viewport) now shows the image you just clicked on in the Pictorial Index. The other viewport shows the next image in the series. In general, when you click on the Pictorial Index, the active viewport will show the image you clicked on, and the remaining viewports will fill with the subsequent images from the series. Click on one of the top two viewports to make it the active viewport and experiment with clicking in the Pictorial Index to change the images displayed in the viewports. Note that the Pictorial Index also shows what images are in being shown in your viewports by red borders (light gray on monochrome monitors) around the miniature images.
When adjusting your images, sometimes you will want to change just one particular image in a viewport, and at other times you might want to change all the images in a series, or even a study, at the same time. You use RA 600s Scope to do this. There will also be times when you want to freeze an image (such as a scout image for example) in a viewport, so that you can change the images in the other viewports but have this image remain unchanged. You do this by pinning the viewport containing the image. You can also mark images of special significance as key images. 1 With the Bailey study open for viewing in four viewports as described in Using the Pictorial Index on page 32, click on the radio button (option button) next to Viewport just above the Prev, Next, Reset and Back buttons. (This radio button will now have a black dot inside it to indicate it is selected.) Click with the mouse in the top left viewport and hold the mouse button down. Drag with the mouse across the viewport. The pointer will change to a hand symbol and the image in the viewport will move with the mouse pointer. You are now panning in your viewport. Notice also that only the image you are dragging moves. The images in the other viewports are not affected. This is because you set the Scope to Viewport by clicking the radio button.
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34 chapter 2 3 Click the One Series radio button just above the Prev, Next, Reset and Back buttons and again drag with the mouse in the top left viewport. Note that now the image in the top right viewport also moves. In general, with the scope set to One Series, actions such as panning that you perform will affect all the images in the same series. Click on the Study radio button just above the Prev, Next, Reset and Back buttons and drag with the mouse in the top left viewport. Now all the images will move, because you have now set the Scope so that all the images in the whole study (hence both series) will be affected. Double-click on one of your viewports. Notice that a thumb tack appears in the top left hand corner of the viewport to indicate that the viewport is pinned. Now try to change the image in the pinned viewport by clicking on the Pictorial Index, dragging in the viewports etc. It will remain unchanged no matter what you do. Unpin the viewport you pinned by double-clicking on it again. Finally, right-click in a viewport, holding down the Ctrl key as you do this. A key icon will appear in the corner of the viewport to indicate that the image has been marked as a key image. This lets you mark images of particular significance and later ask RA 600 only to show these images. Unmark the image by holding down the Ctrl key and right-clicking the viewport again.
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Clicking the All radio button in the Scope section will mean that all the images in all the studies you may have opened will be updated in the same way.
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Try holding down the Shift key while clicking with the right mouse button in a viewport. This will display the image you clicked on in a single large viewport - great for quickly zooming in to view more detail. Hold down the Shift key and right-click again to return to your previous view.
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Windowing
Windowing is one of the most common tasks in digital medical imaging. RA 600 recognizes this by displaying the Windowing tooltab (with the sun icon) on the top when you first open a study for viewing. This lets you window in a variety of ways, and you can also window quickly and easily using the right mouse button.
Click with the right mouse button in one of your viewports and hold the mouse button down. After a moment or two, the cursor will change into a sun symbol. Now, keeping the mouse button pressed, drag the cursor to the left or right to adjust the center, and up and down to adjust width (or a combination of the two). If necessary, click on the tab with the sun icon to bring the Windowing tooltab to the top. Click in the area (field) to the right of where it says Center and type in a value. Do the same for the field next to Width. Select the Invert check box to display the negative of the gray scale of an image or images. Click the ROI (Region of Interest) button and then select an area in a viewport by clicking and holding down the left mouse button and dragging to create a rectangle. Adjust the size of this ROI by dragging on its edges or corners and reposition by clicking inside it and dragging. Note how the windowing changes as you move the ROI around. RA 600 optimizes windowing of the image for the area inside the ROI. When you have finished, right-click inside the ROI and click on Delete on the pop-up menu to remove the ROI. Open the drop-down list immediately underneath the Invert check box. This is a list of windowing settings. Select one of these and see what effect this has on your viewports.
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Non-linear windowing functions are useful for compensating for inherent non-linearity in modalities such as photographic film. The exponential function, for example, makes your images darker since pixel values at the high end of your windowing range will be shown in a greater range of gray tones.
Try selecting the options in the Type drop-down list. These offer various non-linear windowing functions. Move the Slope slider for each type to increase and decrease the slope and see what effect this has. Click with your mouse in the center (between the two small lines) on the vertical slider bar at the bottom of the Windowing tooltab and, holding the mouse button down, drag the slider up and down. This changes the windowing center. To change windowing width, place the mouse pointer at either end of the slider bar (outside the two lines) and again click and drag up and down with the mouse. Restore the original windowing settings by clicking the Reset button underneath the tooltabs. This will return all your images in your viewports to how they were when you first opened the study.
Before looking at this tooltab, however, try this very useful shortcut: Hold down the Shift key on your keyboard and right-click on a viewport. This viewport will now fill the whole viewing area. Repeat this to return to your previous layout. Now click the tab with the magnifying glass Zooming and Flip/Rotate tooltab to the top. icon to bring the
37 3 Click on the 1, 2, 3 and 4 radio buttons and drag the slider to see what effect this has on your viewports. Click with the left mouse button in a viewport and drag to pan zoomed images in the viewport. Note that the cursor turns into a hand icon when you do this. Try selecting the Relative and Absolute radio buttons in turn to see what effect these have. Relative means that with a zoom factor of 1 RA 600 will display the images so they just fit completely in the viewports. Absolute means that RA 600 will (at a zoom factor of 1) show images so that one pixel on your display represents one pixel of the image that was actually acquired. If true size display has been configured on your system, you can try the True Size radio button. Now the images will be displayed at the same size as the original films etc., allowing you to take measurements directly from your screen, for example. Note that the other zoom options are now grayed out (disabled) since you cannot zoom and display images at true size at the same time! Click on the Magnifying Glass button. Click anywhere inside the window which appears and, holding the button down, drag it over your viewports. Drag the slider to increase or decrease the magnification. You can use as many magnifying glasses as you like at the same time. Open another one by clicking on the Magnifying Glass button again. Two magnifying glasses can be very useful when comparing images. Close the magnifying glasses by clicking on the close button the top right hand corner of the magnifying glass window. in
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Try the flipping and rotating buttons at the bottom of the tooltab. Click the Reset button below the tooltabs to restore your images to their initial condition.
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A bar appears at the side of the viewport to allow you to control your cine
Click the On radio button in the Cine section of the tooltab. Your active viewport will start to play a cine. This will show all the images in the series in turn. Note that a bar has appeared in the viewport showing the cine. This shows the loop and its direction. Click within the bar. You have now limited the range of the loop which is shown by the blue line. Only the images within this range are now displayed in the cine. You can have a number of cines running at the same time. Click in another viewport to make it the active viewport and again click on the On radio button on the Cine tooltab. Turn your cines off by clicking on the viewport and then on the Off radio button on the Cine tooltab.
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If you have a wheel on your mouse, you may be able to move through your images using this.
39 4 Try repositioning the pointer by clicking on the arrow and dragging with the mouse. Click on the center of the arrow to move the whole thing, click on the front of the arrow to stretch the arrow to point at a different part of the image, click on the tail of the arrow to move it and the label to another part of the viewport. Right click on the arrow and experiment changing the color, font and line style of the marker by using the pop-up menu. Remove the marker by right clicking on it and selecting Delete from the pop-up menu.
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Distance (1) and angle (2) measurements, profiles (3), COBB angle measurements (4) and probes (5)
Click on the Text button and click on a viewport. Enter some text. Click on the text and drag it to a new position in the viewport. Try a different way to remove the annotation simply drag the text until it is outside the viewport. Click on the Probe button and then in a viewport. The number next to the cross hair indicates the pixel value at the position of the cross hair. Drag the probe across the viewport and note how the pixel value changes. Remove the probe by dragging it outside the viewport. Click on the Distance button and then in a viewport, but hold down the mouse button. Drag to another part of the viewport and release the mouse button. Move the two ends of the line in turn by clicking and dragging on them. Move the whole line by clicking on its center and dragging. Remove the line by dragging it out of the viewport.
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40 chapter 2 10 Click the Profile button and then in a viewport and hold the mouse button down. Drag to another part of the viewport and release the mouse button. A Profile window will appear which shows the pixel values along the line you have drawn. Move the two ends of the line in turn by clicking and dragging on them, or the whole line by clicking on its center and dragging. Note how the profile changes. Move the profile graph by clicking on its title bar and dragging. Close the profile window by clicking the Close button in the top right hand corner. Click the line you drew to make the profile graph reappear. Finally, drag the profile line out of the viewport to remove it.
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Click on the Angle button and then in a viewport. Experiment with dragging the points to create various angles in the viewport. Try the COBB button. This is particularly useful for measuring small angles. Click on the Box, Ellipse and Draw ROI (Region of Interest) buttons in turn and click and drag in a viewport to create ROIs. Note the information that pops up in the ROI Statistics window. Experiment with resizing and moving your ROIs.
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You can create box (1), ellipse (2), freehand (3) and polygon (4) ROIs
41 13 Click on the Polygon ROI button and then in a viewport. Move the mouse pointer to another place in the viewport and click again. The two points you clicked will be joined by a line. Move the pointer and click again. Finally, move the pointer and then double click. This will close the polygon. Before removing all your ROIs by dragging them out of the viewport, click on the viewport to make sure it is the active viewport and check and uncheck the Image Annotation check box. Note that the ROIs (and any other annotation you have in the viewport) is hidden with the Image Annotation check box unchecked. Now make sure the Image Annotation check box is checked and check the Show Labels check box. Note the numbers that appear next to the ROIs you created. You can refer to these labels, which are created for all your annotation, when writing your reports. Try the None, Basic and Full Annotation Level radio buttons. This lets you display none, some or all of the patient information provided with the images. Select the Show Caliper check box to display a caliper for making rough measurements.
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A shutter (here drawn freehand) allows you to focus on areas of particular interest
Remove any shutters from the viewport and select Inverted Window ROI from the drop-down list at the top of the Mask and Overlay tooltab. Again click the Box button and click and drag in a viewport. This time, the area within the box you have drawn will appear with inverted window values. Remove the ROI in the same way as for the shutters - drag it outside the viewport. Select Image Overlay from the drop-down list. Click the Box button and click and drag inside the viewport. You will see the border of the box you drew, but nothing else will look any different. You still need to specify which image to overlay on the viewport. Right-click within the box you created and select Insert Image from the pop-up menu. Using the sub-menus, select one of the images in the study. This will appear inside your box. Using the lower section of the Mask and Overlay tooltab, try moving the Blend and Zoom sliders. Blend allows you to adjust the transparency of the overlaid image. You can also click inside the box and drag to pan the image, and right-click and drag to adjust the window levels of the overlaid image. When you have finished, right click inside the box and select Delete to remove the image overlay.
Reporting
You can readily write your reports while working in RA 600 by using the Reports window. How this will look will depend very much on how your system has been configured. You may see a form with buttons and options, or perhaps just a plain text box. 1 If you cannot see the Reports window on your screen, click the tab with the Swiss Army knife icon and then check the Show Reports check box. Click in the Reports window and type a short report.
43 3 Click on the Back button underneath the tooltabs. You will be asked whether you wish to save your report with the study. Click the No button to avoid saving any changes.
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Going further
This chapter has only briefly touched on some of the features of RA 600. Once you have become somewhat familiar with working with it, you will find a great many other things you can do. Only aspects relating to the Data Selector and the Viewing Section have been covered in this chapter it is quite possible that you have other capabilities installed, such as printing, 3D viewing, teleradiology and more. All these are covered elsewhere in this guide, where you will also often find other ways of doing what has been described in this chapter more quickly.
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The Data Selector screen ........................................46 Patient and study views ...........................................48 Local and remote views ...........................................49 Importing studies from remote view to hard disk......51 Examining your patient and study lists.....................52 Narrowing your search with sorting and filtering ......55 Pinpointing your data with queries ...........................58 Selecting studies and opening them for viewing ......62 Working with folders.................................................66 Saving hard disk space by compressing studies .....67 Protecting studies with delete locks .........................69 Changing patient and study list headers ..................79
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46 chapter 3 hen you first start RA 600 you will initially see the Data Selector. You use this to select which images you want to view. It lets you browse and pick from databases, studies and series. You can even run queries (perform searches) to pinpoint the cases and studies youre interested in. With the Data Selector you can also organize your database into folders and perform other housekeeping tasks such as configuring other parts of RA 600. The Data Selector is your gateway to the rest of RA 600. Using the menu bar or tooltabs, you can go directly to any other part, such as image acquisition, archiving, 3D imaging, quality control, teleradiology and more (if, of course, you have these capabilities installed).
The menu bar gives you access to all the functions of the Data Selector. The actual menus you see will depend on which RA 600 modules have been installed on your machine and what user rights you have (aspects such as configuration may, for example, only be accessible to those with administrator rights). Often you will find it quicker to use tool bar buttons for tasks you perform frequently. These are grouped together on tool bars which can be positioned at any side of the screen by clicking on their two gray lines and dragging. RA 600 comes with a set of pre-defined tool bars, but it is very easy to create your own (or modify the existing ones).
On the right of the screen are tooltabs. Highly characteristic of RA 600, these offer a quick alternative to the menu bar.
Centricity Radiology RA 600 V6.1 reference guide online
47 In the bottom right hand corner is the Exit button which you can use to close RA 600. The main area in the center of the screen shows you the contents of your local database (your local view) and possibly one or more of the remote databases which you also have access to (your remote views). You can browse the information within these windows and with a click of the mouse select the studies, series or even individual images you want to view. A further term you will come across is worklist views. If your system is connected to a HIS or RIS, these may be actual worklists provided outside of RA 600 (lists of new studies which require some action, for example). Generally, however, you can create and select worklist views which show particular views of what is in your database - just studies of a certain modality, for example, or perhaps only studies with the status New.
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The images you want to access may be on a hard disk in your own machine (your local database) or possibly on any one of several databases elsewhere to which your machine is connected (remote databases). If your machine is not connected to a network (you have a stand-alone system), you will see only your local database in the center of the Data Selector. If, however, you also have one or more remote databases to choose from, you will generally see two windows, one above the other. The upper window, your local view, shows your local database. The lower window, the remote view, shows one of your remote databases. You can only view one remote database at a time, but you can easily switch between the current one being shown by clicking on the tabs located at the bottom of the remote view window (provided more than one remote view has been set up on your system). As with the local view, the title bar for the remote view window shows you how many studies are in the database and the name of the database. It also has an indicator on the left (green or red on color monitors, an open circle or a circle with a cross inside it on monochrome). A green light or open circle indicates that the connection to the database is working properly. A red light or circle with a cross means that the connection is broken and you will not be able to view any studies in the window.
If you see a red indicator when trying to view a database you regularly have access to, it may well be that the system on which the database resides is not switched on. You should check this and/or contact your technical support if necessary. If you cannot do a query on a remote system (and so cannot import data from it), this could be because the remote system does not support DICOM Query and Retrieve. Between RA 600 systems there might also be a configuration setting enabled on the remote system restricting the number of systems that can do queries and retrieves to known and pre-configured systems (origins). If, however, you suddenly cannot do a query on a remote system you use regularly, you should first check that the host machine is not turned off.
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Medical images can be substantial in size and soon eat up hard disk space when they are included in your local database. With RA 600 you can see how much room you have left at any time. To view the space left on your hard disk click the tab with the filing cabinet icon to reveal the Filing tooltab. You will see an indicator at the top of the tooltab, together with a number stating the megabytes you have left on your hard disk.
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During import you can click the Cancel button under the progress bar to stop the transfer of subsequent studies (RA 600 will complete the import in progress before stopping). If your remote view is a patient view and you select a patient to import, RA 600 will import all the studies for that patient.
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Your local view (and any remote view you may have) will show a study list or patient list which lists all the studies or patients in the database concerned. Each row represents a single study or patient. If you have a patient list, double-clicking on the patient icon (or just a single click on the + sign next to the patient icon) will reveal all the studies available for that patient. Each study may itself contain a number of series which may in turn contain many images. Each column contains specific information concerning the studies, such as the patients name, kind of modality used, and so on. As for many parts of RA 600, the information in these columns is configurable (see your system administrator or Changing patient and study list headers on page 79).
Each study in a study list may contain a number of series (the actual number is shown in the Series column). Using the Data Selector, you can quickly look at exactly what each study contains. To look at the series within a study double-click on the study icon or singleclick on the plus (+) sign next to the studys icon . The study list will expand to show all the series and various items of information on them. (Typically, you will open up studies in your studies view if you dont want to view a whole study but only one series or a selected number of series from it, or if you want to compare different series from the same or different studies.)
53 To view details on a patient (study, series or image) click with the right mouse button on the patient (study, series, image) in your patient or study view and select Info from the pop-up menu. On the left-hand side of the Info dialog box you will see an icon of the patient and, at the next level down, the study folder icon. If the study contains more than one series, you can open the study up by double-clicking on the icon. You will see the underlying series and, in the right hand side of the box the DICOM information. You can likewise open up the series by double-clicking on them. A list of individual images is then shown. By clicking on one of the images you will see the DICOM information corresponding to that image. You can close series and studies up by double-clicking on their icons.
You can also view this information by selecting File menu bar. Info from the
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Sorting
Sorting applies to the studies currently being displayed and involves arranging the rows (studies) in the study list in ascending or descending order. To sort your studies by column click on the header of the column you want to sort on. The first click will rearrange the study list in ascending order. A second click will reverse the sort order. A small arrow appears in the header pointing up or down to indicate the direction of the sort.
Extended sorting
You can set the sort order (ascending or descending) independently for each field. Click on each field in turn to select them then check or uncheck the Ascending check box. You cannot directly change the order of fields in the Extended Sorting list. You will need to remove the fields and add them again in the correct order.
You can perform more sophisticated sorting of the studies in your local and remote views. RA 600 will then first sort according to one column you select, and then within these groupings on any other criteria you select. You might, for example, choose to perform the main sort on patient name and, as a secondary criterion, on study date. RA 600 will then display the studies for each patient grouped together, and within these groups for each patient the studies will be arranged in chronological order. To perform an extended sort right click on the header in your local or remote view that you want to perform the main sort on and select Sort Extended from the pop-up menu. In the Extended Sorting dialog box, select from the sort criteria listed in the box on the left and place them in the order in which you want RA 600 to sort in the right hand box by selecting them and clicking the >> and << buttons to add and remove them. Place the main sort criterion at the top of the list.
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A note on filtering
Filtering does not actually remove studies from the database but merely hides them from view for as long as you apply the filter. Nevertheless, if filter conditions are set (either with or without Query conditions), you will most certainly hide available studies from view. This can be confusing for other users or even to yourself at a later time. You are therefore advised to regularly check which filter conditions are active while working with RA 600!
Viewing particular modalities The Modality section on the Data Selector tooltab shows all the modalities used to create the studies in the study list of the active database view (local or remote). You can select or deselect individual modalities by clicking on the check boxes to the left of the modality abbreviation. If modalities are selected, RA 600 will show all the relevant studies in the study list. The All and None buttons at the bottom of the Modality section let you quickly select or deselect all the modalities in the list. Viewing studies of a certain origin You can use the Origin section on the Data Selector tooltab to show all known remote systems or sites that have sent studies or series to your system which are shown in your patient or study list. These might be a variety of systems or sites both inside and outside the hospital. You can include one or more of these remote origins by selecting them. The study list will then only show studies originating from the selected sites. The All and None buttons select or deselect all listed origins. This filter option only works on remote databases if they are on other RA 600 systems. Viewing studies in particular folders The Folder section shows all folders that have been created on your local system (and on remote systems if these are also RA 600 systems). You can select or deselect folders by clicking on them. The All and None buttons select or deselect all the folders.
The filtering options in the Modalities, Origins and Folders sections are always combined (and/and conditions). So, if you have selected MR as the modality and General as the folder, you will create a filtered view that only shows MR studies in the General folder. To avoid any confusion, sort and filter settings are not saved when the system is turned off or you log off. When RA 600 is first started up, or a new user logs on, there are no active filter conditions (unless an initial worklist view has been configured which does contain filters).
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While sorting and filtering can help greatly in narrowing down your search, RA 600s Query feature allows you to pinpoint exactly what you want if you have some item of information, such as a specific name, ID, description etc. To perform a query click on the Query button near the top of the Data Selector tooltab. Enter your query in the dialog box. You simply enter in this box what you want to search for. Fields you leave blank will not form any part of the query. So, for example, if you enter Bailey, Nicole in the top field, RA 600 will display only those studies for this patient. To keep the same query to use the next time make sure the Keep Query check box in the bottom left corner of the Query Parameters dialog box is checked. The next time you perform a query, the same details will be entered in the fields when you the Query Parameters dialog box opens, even if you query another (remote) view. Using wildcards The parameters are DICOM 3.0 information as provided in the study headers. To avoid any confusion, RA 600 will display only exact matches. So, for example, Bailey, N. will not show the same studies as Bailey, Nicole. If you cant be sure of the exact wording, you can use wildcards. Simply type in an asterisk (*) after what you are looking for. This tells RA 600 to allow any characters after what you have entered. So, for example, if you enter B* in the first field of the Query Parameters dialog box, RA 600 will display studies of all patients whose names begin with B. A query such as a*\b* will retrieve all studies starting with an A or B; e.g., Anderson AND Buxton. The query *An* will return all items containing the letter combination 'an'; e.g., Anderson, Tim and Riquelme, Juan. When you click on the OK button, the dialog box will disappear, but the query will remain in force until you remove it, log off, or turn off the system. You are reminded that a Query is in force by the message [Query] in the title bar of your database view.
The use of wildcards can be especially important when querying descriptions. Entering Chest will only yield exact matches, i.e. descriptions which include the word Chest and nothing else. To display all studies whose descriptions start with the word Chest, you should add an asterisk after your entry (Chest*). You can quickly reset all the filters and queries you might have created on your worklist view by clicking Reset on the Data Selector tooltab.
59 Nevertheless, if a query and/or filter conditions are set, you will almost certainly not be displaying many of the studies in the database. This can subsequently be confusing to others, or even possibly yourself. Filters and queries are extremely powerful tools for pinpointing your studies, but should be used with some caution. You are advised to regularly check what filter and query conditions are in force while working with RA 600.
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If there are particular sorts, filters or queries (or some combination of these) you perform frequently, you can save these settings as worklist views which you can then select at any time from the drop-down list at the top of the Data Selector tooltab. You might, for example, create a worklist view just to show MR studies if you are frequently only involved in working on these. Or, if you typically want to look at only those studies with the status NEW, you could set up a worklist view to show only those studies with this particular status. Whatever you can sort, filter or query on, you can create a worklist view for. You can also configure your worklist views so that patients, studies, series etc. with particular attributes (such as the status NEW for example) are highlighted in a different font or color. Contact your system administrator for details.
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Once you have found the data on your system that is of interest, you will typically want to open it for viewing. You can select for viewing all the information on a patient, all the series within a study, a particular series or even an individual image. Or you can select multiple patients, studies, series or images which are all to be opened for viewing. Generally, you will open studies for viewing from your local view. Such studies are on your systems hard disk and ready for immediate display. You can, however, also open studies stored elsewhere. For more on this, see Directly viewing studies with a remote view, DICOM server or DICOM volume on page 65. When in the Viewing Section of RA 600 (see the next chapter), there are many possible layouts or hanging protocols that can be used to show your information. You can ask RA 600 to automatically select the best hanging protocol/ layout for the studies or series you have selected or assume full control of the selection yourself.
You select studies (or series) in your study or patient list simply by clicking on the + signs next to the icons to reveal the information you are interested in and then clicking on the appropriate row in your study or patient list. To select more than one study, series or image, hold down the Ctrl key while you select additional ones. To select a range of studies, series or images, click on the first and then drag with the mouse to the last in the range. (Alternatively, you can use the standard Windows method of clicking on the first in the range and then pressing the Shift key when you click on the last in the range.)
If you double-click on a study, all the series it contains will be opened automatically and RA 600 will switch to the Viewing Section and display the study. To view a single series which is part of a study click on + sign next to the icon of the study containing the series. Select the series you want to view. Then right-click on the series and choose View from the pop-up menu that appears.
Centricity Radiology RA 600 V6.1 reference guide online
63 Again RA 600 will switch to the Viewing Section and show you your chosen series.
You may often need to view a number of series or studies at the same time - to compare them, for example. With RA 600, you can view two or more studies one after the other or all at the same time. To view a number of studies or series one after the other select the studies and/or series you want to view from the list in the Data Selector (click on them while holding down the Ctrl key). Right-click in one of the selected areas and select View from the pop-up menu. Click on Yes in the View Studies message box to view all the selected studies at the same time or No view them one after the other. If you choose Yes, RA 600 displays a message confirming that the items you selected are from different patients. Click OK to view the studies. If you have chosen a hanging protocol suitable for viewing two or more studies, both studies will display in the viewport. If you have chosen a hanging protocol capable of displaying only one study, the first selected study will appear in the viewport area, while the others will appear as thumbnails in the Pictorial Index ready for easy access. In that case, you can use the Previous and Next buttons at the bottom of the Viewing Section to toggle between the sets of images. If you choose No, RA 600 places the first images of the first study in the viewport and displays the full range of images in the Pictorial Index. Clicking the Next button enables you to move from one study to another without having to return to the Data Selector. You click the Previous button to view a preceding study.
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Directly viewing studies with a remote view, DICOM server or DICOM volume
Viewing studies stored in a remote view, on a DICOM server or on a DICOM volume (CD or other removable disk) is somewhat different than viewing studies stored on your hard disk. This is because studies in the former situation are not on your local hard disk but elsewhere in your system. To be able to display images quickly, however, RA 600 needs fast access to them. You can always import studies from a remote view to a local view (see Importing studies from remote view to hard disk on page 51). This will transfer them over the network to your systems hard disk. You can then open and view the study from your local view as described earlier. It is, however, possible to view studies in a remote view directly (without importing them first). To directly view a study in a remote view, on a DICOM server or DICOM volume click on the study and select View from the pop-up menu. right-
When RA 600 is first installed, the direct viewing of the studies feature is not turned on. To do this, select Configuration Viewing... from the Data Selector menu bar and make sure the Direct View check box is checked on the General tab of the Viewing Properties dialog box.
You will be taken to the Viewing Section and can start viewing the study. If the study is of a significant size it may take a little while for all the images to arrive on your workstation, depending on the speed of your network connection. While these images are arriving, you can still view the ones that have already been received (if you are using a DICOM connection). Your Pictorial Index will continually update itself with the new images as they arrive. For more on viewing images that are not (yet) on your local system, see Viewing images as they arrive on page 171.
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You can organize your studies into folders to group similar studies together for example, or keep studies that are not relevant separate from each other. You can create, rename and delete folders and move studies between them. You do this using the Filing tooltab (click the tab with this icon). The Folders section shows all the folders created on your system. To create a new folder click the New button in the Folders section on the Filing tooltab. In the New Folder dialog box, enter a name for the new folder. You can also specify a Windows folder (directory) into which the folder should be placed. If you leave the field blank, the folder will be placed in the main RA 600 Database directory. To change the name of a folder click the Edit button in the Folders section on the Filing tooltab. In the Edit Folder dialog box, enter a new name for the folder. To remove (delete) a folder first make sure it is empty by moving or deleting any studies it contains (to avoid inadvertent data loss, RA 600 will not delete a folder unless it is empty). Then select the folder in the list in the Folders section of the Filing tooltab and click the Delete button.
You can also create and delete folders by selecting Folder New or Folder bar. Delete from the menu
You can move your studies between folders using either the menu bar or the right mouse button menu. To move a study to a new folder click on the study in the study list to select it. Select File Move to Folder on the menu bar or right click on the study in the study list and select Move to Folder from the pop-up menu.
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Studies containing large numbers of detailed images can grow large in size, and as the number of them on your system grows you might find yourself running low on disk space even if you have quite a large hard drive and remove old studies regularly. Generally, RA 600 stores studies on your hard disk in uncompressed form since this offers the quickest way to access the information and display your images. If, however, your priorities lie more towards creating more disk space than the absolute best performance, RA 600 allows you to compress your studies when they are placed on your hard disk. They will then take up considerably less space and so allow you to store a greater number of studies at any given time. RA 600 compresses studies depending on which folder they are placed. You can, therefore, compress all or just some of your images by specifying that all or just some of your folders should be compressed and placing your studies in the folders appropriately. If a folder already contains (uncompressed) studies and you decide that it should be compressed, you can either have RA 600 compress all the studies in the folder, or just compress new studies that are added to that folder. You can decompress the studies in a compressed folder at any time (provided you have sufficient disk space!). To create a new compressed folder select Folder New... from the Data Selector menu bar. In the New Folder dialog box, make sure the Compressed check box is checked. All the studies you subsequently place in this folder will be compressed. To compress studies in an existing folder select Folder Edit and then the name of the folder you want to compress. In the Edit Folder dialog box, check the Compressed check box if you want all studies subsequently placed in the folder to be compressed. Check the All check box if you want RA 600 to compress the studies already in this folder. (When you click OK, RA 600 will start compressing these studies. This process may take some time.) To decompress studies in a folder select Folder Edit and then the name of the folder you want to decompress. In the Edit Folder dialog box, uncheck the Compressed check box if you do not want all studies subsequently placed in the folder to be compressed. Uncheck the All check box if you want RA 600 to decompress the studies already in this folder.
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Depending on how your workstation is used, there may be studies on your system which you might want to protect against accidental deletion. RA 600 allows you to do this using delete locks. Once a study has been locked it cannot be deleted without first removing this lock. To lock or unlock a study against deletion click with the right mouse button on the study in your patient or study view and select Lock Lock or Lock Unlock from the right mouse button menu.
Make sure the worklist view you want to add the column to is being shown in the Data Selector (select the worklist view from the dropdown list at the top of the Data Selector tooltab). Right-click on the column to the left of which you want to add the new column and select Insert column... from the right mouse button menu. Click the >> button to open the Edit Column Properties dialog box. Select All from the Level drop-down list. Find and double-click on Delete Lock from the drop-down list. Click OK.
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A new column will now appear in your worklist view. Studies which are locked are indicated by an L in this column.
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If you cannot see all the possible options on the right mouse button menu, this probably means that you have not been given permission as a user to change the status of studies to any other status. It could also be that your are not allowed to set back the status of studies to a previous status (from Authorized to Created for example), since this can cause problems for workflow. Consult the installation guide or your system administrator for details on how to set study statuses.
In the Add View dialog box, type in a description in the Description text box. The description you enter here will appear in the Worklist View drop-down list on the Data Selector tooltab. Use the List drop-down list to select the worklist view you just created.
71 4 5 Use the Copy settings from drop-down list if you want to set up a worklist view similar to one that already exists. Click OK. If required, select the new worklist view from the drop-down list at the top of the Data Selector tooltab and then select Database View Properties... from the Data Selector menu bar. Use the Configure View dialog box to modify the properties of the worklist view.
To remove (delete) a worklist view select the worklist view you wish to remove from the drop-down list at the top of the Data Selector tooltab. Select Database Delete View from the Data Selector menu bar and then select the worklist view you want to remove.
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Do not use too low a value for the period between refreshes or the performance of your RA 600 system may be affected (a period of no less than five minutes is recommended).
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72 chapter 3 5 Add any filters you wish applied by clicking the Add button, and remove or edit existing filters by clicking on them and then on Delete or Edit (see Adding filters on page 73 for details). Change the appearance of the worklist view by selecting fonts for each level in the Fonts section of the dialog box. Click on the level in the window and then on the Font button - see Customizing your fonts in RA 600 on page 304 for details.
Including sorts
If the None radio button is selected, you should disable the Allow Sort check box or the original sort order will be lost after doing a local column sort.
In the Sort section of the Configure View dialog box, select the None radio button if you do not wish to change the order in which the studies were generated. Selecting Keep last sort will keep the list sorted according to the last sort that was performed, even if you close and restart RA 600. If the Initial radio button is selected, you can define an initial sort which will be performed when the worklist view is first displayed. Defining initial sorts You define an initial sort by first clicking the Initial radio button and then clicking the Define... button. In the Extended Sorting dialog box you can set multiple sort criteria using the options given on the left of the box, which are in fact the same as the headers which currently appear in your worklist. For details on completing the Extended Sorting dialog box, see Extended sorting on page 55.
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Adding filters
When you have created the filter it will appear in the list in the Configure View dialog box. The Allow user to change filter setting check box permits users to change the active fields for a filter (in the Filter section of the Configure View dialog box, click on the filter you want to enable or disable, then on the Edit button. In the Filter dialog box you can now uncheck the Allow user to change filter setting check box. The fact that the filter is now disabled will be indicated by a No in the Allow change column of the list in the Filters section of the Configure View dialog box).
You can create your own filters which will then appear on the Data Selector tooltab and thus allow you to filter your worklist according to particular DICOM tags. You can also specify initial values so that the worklist will be automatically filtered according to the parameters you specify when the worklist view is initially opened for viewing. To create a filter 1 2 Click the Add button in the Filters section of the Configure View dialog box. In the Filter dialog box, select a DICOM description by typing in the group and element of a DICOM tag filter or click the >> button to find the tag you want to use to filter. Check the Allow user to change filter setting check box. Enter initial values if you wish (see About initial values on page 73).
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The filter you have specified will now appear as a separate section on the Data Selector tooltab. All the values for the DICOM tag which appear in your worklist view will be listed with check boxes next to them. If you specified various initial values, only the check boxes next to these quantities will be checked (and only the studies which include these values will be shown in your worklist view). To edit or remove a filter click on the filter in the Filters section of the Configure View dialog box to select it. Click the Edit or Delete button.
By default, all the check boxes next to the possible options will be checked on the Data Selector tooltab after you create a new filter. If you initially want only certain of these check boxes checked, type the names of the check boxes you want checked in the Initial values field of the Filter dialog box. Each value should be on a separate line (press Enter to go to a new line.)
Defining queries
Apart from including sorts and filters, you can also have RA 600 perform an initial query on your worklist view.
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74 chapter 3 If you check the Initial check box in the Query section of the Configure View dialog box, RA 600 will perform a query on the worklist view when it is opened. If this check box is not checked, the worklist view will be empty when opened. If the Allow Query check box is not checked, clicking the Query... button on the Data Selector tooltab will refresh the list instead of displaying the Query dialog window. The Allow Empty Query button gives you the option of telling RA 600 not to perform empty queries. Click the Define... button in the Query section of the Configure View dialog box to define the query which will be initially performed when you open the worklist view. Use the Query Parameters dialog box in exactly the same way as when normally making a query. The Fields... button lets you define what should appear in the Query Parameters dialog box when you perform a query on the worklist view, allowing you to simplify the options or offer a comprehensive range of items you can query on.
Some systems do not allow empty queries to be performed on their databases. And using a worklist to query an archive with thousands of studies may take a very long time to produce a result if an empty query is used. In general it is therefore best to disable this option. Although in RA 600 you can define any field to be queried, the database that is queried must support this field.
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75 To specify specific information to be highlighted in your worklist view 1 In the Fonts section of the Configure View dialog box, click on the type of item in the list (for example, click on Study item if you want to have RA 600 look for a property which relates to a study) and then the Add button. In the Add font criteria dialog box, select the DICOM tag from the Field drop-down list (click the >> button), or manually enter the DICOM values for the tag into the text boxes on the left. Specify the Value you want RA 600 to search for. For example, if you selected Patient Sex (0010, 0040) from the Field drop-down list, a sensible value would be M, F or O (Male, Female or Other). Click OK. Repeat steps 1 to 3 until you have added all the items you wish to the list. Click on one of the items you created and then the Font button. Specify the font you want to use in the Font dialog box for this item. Repeat for the remaining items you created. Click on the items you created in the list and use the Up and Down buttons to rearrange them as necessary to have RA 600 search for the items in the order you wish.
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The order of the items in the list and how RA 600 displays lines
RA 600 works from the top of the list to the bottom according to the DICOM hierarchy. Although you cannot use the Up and Down buttons to change the overall hierarchy (you cannot place a series item above a study item for example), you can rearrange the items you have defined within each level (reorder your study items, for example).
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76 chapter 3 The order in which you place the items in the list can affect how RA 600 displays a line in the worklist view. If a line contains more than one item in the list, RA 600 displays the line in the font of the item which is higher in the list. Thus, if you specify that lines containing a status of Seen should be red and lines containing a Patient Sex of M should be green, a line which contains both items will be red if the Status item appears above the Patient Sex item in the list, and green if the Patient Sex item is higher up the list.
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Newly created remote views will be empty at first. To see the data you will need to perform a query on the remote view.
As soon as you have created one or more remote views click (if necessary) the Remote Views check box on the Filing tooltab to make the created remote views visible in the Data Selector.
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Click on the name of the remote view in the window in the Remote Views section of the Filing tooltab. Click the Edit button. Modify the settings in the Edit Remote View dialog box.
To delete a remote view click on the name of the remote view in the window in the Remote Views section of the Filing tooltab. Then click the Delete button.
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RA 600 allows you to add, remove and change the headers which appear at the top of your studies and patients lists so that you can change the information displayed in the columns (and the order in which these are displayed). To do this, use the right mouse button menu which appears when you rightclick on one of the study list headers. Column Properties... allows you to change the alignment of the header or change its title (with the Edit option). Delete will remove the column from your study list (although it will not delete the actual DICOM data). Adding columns The Insert Column... option allows you to add columns to your study list. The new column is inserted to the left of the column whose header was rightclicked on to reveal the right mouse button menu. To add a column to your study or patient list 1 2 3 Right-click on the header to the left of which you want to add the new column. Select Insert column... from the right mouse button menu. In the Edit Column Properties dialog box, select the DICOM information you want to display in the column from the >> drop-down list (or manually enter the actual DICOM values into the fields on the left). If desired, use the Description field to change the title of the column as it appears in the Data Selector. Select one of the radio buttons to justify the information to the Left, in the Center or to the Right in the column.
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Modifying columns
You can change the name of an existing column and the information it displays. To modify a column to your study or patient list 1 Right-click on the header of the column you want to change and select Column Properties....
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80 chapter 3 2 In the Edit Column Properties dialog box, make any changes you wish by modifying the contents of the list, the description or the alignment of the column heading. Click the Default button if you want RA 600 to consider your modifications as a default in the future. (Clicking Default before exiting the dialog box will undo any changes you have made.).
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Viewing images
Once you have used the Data Selector to locate studies you want to view, you use the Viewing Section to examine them. You can quickly adjust windowing, create cine loops, examine images in detail with magnifying glasses and a great deal more. To aid diagnosis, a wide range of measurement annotation tools is also at hand. Changes made to images can be recorded and sent over the netwok as separate DICOM entities in the form of Presentation States, Reports too, can be sent and retrieved as separate items. Also described is how you can install and work with plugins to enhance the power of of RA 600.
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The Pictorial Index in detail ......................................83 Viewports ................................................................ 87 Undoing actions .......................................................90 Working with presentation states .............................92 Windowing................................................................95 Panning ..................................................................102 Navigating between images ...................................103 Key notes ...............................................................107 Zooming and the magnifying glass ........................ 111 Filtering images ..................................................... 114 Creating and using cines........................................ 116 Annotating images .................................................122 Creating reports .....................................................143 Study Statuses .......................................................151
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he Viewing Section of RA 600 opens automatically when you doubleclick on a study in the Data Selector (see chapter 3). You use it to manipulate and view studies for comparison and diagnosis.
In many respects the Viewing Section is the heart of RA 600 where you will probably spend much of your time. You can window images, zoom in and out, flip and rotate them, process them with filters, measure and annotate them, create cines (film clips), send them to other systems, print them, include reports and much more.
When the Viewing Section opens to display the images you want to view, the Pictorial Index on the left of the screen shows you miniature views of all these images. In the center of the screen are the viewports, each of which shows you one of the images. The large Up and Down buttons above and below the viewports let you scroll through your images. On the right of your screen are tooltabs for manipulating and analyzing the images in the viewports. Above the tooltabs is a window giving details on the patient(s) and study (studies). Immediately below the tooltabs is the Scope which lets you limit what you do (such as windowing) to just a single viewport or a number of studies (or have it apply to more than one study). The Prev and Next buttons display the previous or next study/series without having to go back to the Data Selector. You can use the Reset button to return all the images in the viewports to their condition when they were originally opened, undoing any changes (such as zooming or filtering) you have made to them. The Back button returns you to the Data Selector. There is also a simplified version of the Data Selector available while you are viewing images. Usually located under the viewports, this Data Selector window lets you search for and open other studies in your local database while in the Viewing Section. Next to this is a Reports window in which you can produce a report on a study while viewing it.
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84 chapter 4 From the Data Selector, open one or more studies containing more than one series. In the Pictorial Index, click on each study header to collapse the study. To expand a study, click on its study header again. Beneath the study header, you should see the series headers of the series containing the studys images. Click on a series header to collapse and expand the series. You can partially collapse an expanded series by clicking on the small black box on the right side of the series summary. The index will reduce itself to one image, the first one in the series, provided you are working with a series displayed in the viewport. Click on the box again, and the Pictorial Index will display the first, middle and last image of the series. (The gray boxes in the series summary represent images not visible in the Pictorial Index, but which are part of the series nonetheless.) Click on the black box to the right yet again and RA 600 displays all the images comprising the series. You can reach the same objective by right-clicking an image in a series in the Pictorial Index and selecting the appropriate command from the pop-up menu: Show all images One image only or First, middle, last image. You can also try the 1 image out of command displayed in the pop-up menu. This contains a submenu with the numbers 2 through 10. By selecting a number, you select the image interval you want to view in the Pictorial Index.
If you expand and collapse a series not displayed in the viewport, the series summary displays its representations in black and gray.
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When your system first opens a series for viewing, it displays the images in the Pictorial Index in ascending order of the index numbers of the images (essentially the order in which the images were stored). You may, however, wish to view the images in the Pictorial Index in a different order - according to image number, acquisition number or slice location perhaps. You can quickly sort series in this way. To sort series in the Pictorial Index right-click in the Pictorial Index on the series you want to sort and select Sort Series and then the type of sorting you desire from the pop-up menu. It may be that the images are sorted according to the correct number, but they are displayed in reverse order. To reverse the order of images in the Pictorial Index right-click in the Pictorial Index on the series you want to reverse the order of and select Sort series Reversed from the pop-up menu.
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86 chapter 4 To move the Pictorial Index to another part of the screen click on the two lines at the top of the Pictorial Index, drag it to another side of the screen and release the mouse button. Your Pictorial Index will dock automatically at the new location. To turn off (hide) the Pictorial Index click the Layout tooltab (with the Swiss Army knife icon). Then uncheck the Show Pictorial Index check box.
You can also hide or show the Pictorial Index (or the tooltabs and Reports window) using the Layout menu on the menu bar (or hide it by clicking the Close button in the top right hand corner).
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Your active viewport is highlighted by a box around it (red on color displays, white on monochrome).
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Configuring viewports
When you are viewing images, you can have anything from just one large viewport to a sophisticated layout with larger and smaller viewports showing images from a number of different series or studies. This would, for example, enable you readily to compare two different series or studies from a patient taken at different times. You can decide on the layout of your viewports in the Data Selector before you actually view your images (see Selecting studies and opening them for viewing on page 62). But you can quickly change this at any time while you are in the Viewing Section. To quickly select from a range of standard hanging protocols (layouts), use the Layout tooltab (with the Swiss army knife icon).
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As in many Windows programs, RA 600 includes an Undo feature. So if while viewing images you perform some action, such as windowing, you can go back to the situation immediately prior to this action. You might do this if you have simply done something you quickly wish you had not done, but also for experimenting and trying out various options. To undo an action you performed while viewing images before performing any other action, select Study Undo from the menu bar or right-click in a viewport and select Undo from the pop-up menu. You can undo almost all actions you perform while viewing images. There is, however, a limited number of actions, such as clicking the Reset button, that RA 600 cannot undo. In these cases, RA 600 will warn you that the action cannot be undone before proceeding.
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Apart from the borders around the viewports, a further indication that the Scope is set to a selection of viewports is that the word Viewport next to the radio button in the Scope section becomes Viewports.
You can also click the Series, Study or All radio button. Your multiple selection will remain, but the Scope will now be active on all the viewports in the series, study or all displayed studies.
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You open a study from the Data Selector and manipulate images in the Viewing Section as you normally would; create annotations, window images, zoom, and pin for example. When you are sure you have made the adjustments you wish, you save your work by adding it to the study. In effect, you will be able to view two copies of the same study: the original study as you initially viewed it and the study with your manipulations (the presentation state). To create a presentation state 1 2 Double-click on a study in the Data Selector. In the Viewing Section, make whatever changes you wish to an image or images by annotating, windowing, magnifying etc. (image overlays not supported). Click the Add... button in the Presentation States section of the Layout tooltab (with this icon). Select an appropriate label from the Label drop-down list in the Add Presentation State dialog box, or type in a label of your choice. If you choose not to label the presentation state, RA 600 does it for you by attaching the date and time at which the presentation state was created. The label annotation 2001111615H30M, for example, indicates that the presentation state was made on 16 Nov 2001 at 3:30 PM. Give the presentation state a description by specifying the Description field and click OK. Click the Back button to exit the Viewing Section. The Presentation States check box in the Save Data dialog box will be checked (click the Advanced button in the Save Data dialog box to view the check box, if necessary). Click Yes to permanently save the changes you made.
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93 It is not necessary to exit the Viewing Section each time you want to create a presentation state. You can, in fact, create several presentation states in one viewing by selecting <none> from the Presentation States drop-down list and making new manipulations to the original images. Or you can re-manipulate images you have not yet permanently added to a study by repeating steps 2 through 5 above.
A presentation state is actually a reference that effectively enables you to save the way you look at an image.
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94 chapter 4 You can delete a presentation state in the Viewing Section at any moment by clicking the Delete button, provided, of course, that you have not permanently saved it. A permanently saved presentation state, however, can be removed from the Data Selector by selecting it and pressing the Delete button on the keyboard.
You can identify a presentation state in the Data Selector by expanding to series level the study to which the presentation state belongs. A presentation state at this level will have the modality PR. You can identify a presentation state at image level by the Label you gave it when you added it to the study. To view a presentation state from the Data Selector double-click on the study to which the presentation state belongs. You can also open the study up to series level, right-click on it and select View from the pop-up menu. This also works at image level. If you open a study (by double-clicking on its study icon for example) that has one or more presentation states, RA 600 will display the most recent presentation state. You can select a different presentation state from the Presentation States drop-down list on the Layout tooltab. To view the original images, select <none> from the Presentation States drop-down list. If you open multiple studies, the content of the Presentation States drop-down list will change when the study in the active viewport changes.
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In the Viewing Properties dialog, click on the Modalities tab. Select from the Modality Type drop-down list the modality for which you want to adjust the windowing parameters. (If you do not see the modality you need, place your cursor in the drop-down list, type in the name of the modality (e.g. MR) and click New). You can use the Default setting if you want to apply adjustments to non-configured modalities. Go to the Windowing section of the Viewing Properties dialog and select from the Parameters drop-down list either center/width or min/max. Click OK to exit the Viewing Properties dialog box. In the Data Selector, double-click on a study with a modality for which you have adjusted windowing parameters. In the Viewing Section, select the Windowing tooltab (with this icon). In the Window section, you will see the parameters you just configured; i.e., center/width or min/max. If the Basic or Full annotation level option is selected on the Annotation and Measurement tooltab (with this icon), you will also see your images annotated in accordance with the configuration you just made.
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Windowing images
There are two main ways you can window your images in RA 600. For quick and easy adjustments, you can right-click and drag in a viewport or, for more precise adjustments, you can use the Windowing tooltab.
If the Windowing tooltab is visible, you will see the controls move and the settings change as you drag in the viewport. The current settings are also generally visible in the lower left corner of the viewport.
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The Windowing tooltab gives you precise control over windowing your images. Since windowing is one of the most frequent tasks when using the Viewing Section, the Windowing tooltab is always on top when you first open a study. You can, however, get to it at any time by clicking the tab with the sun icon.
RA 600 supports two sets of windowing parameters on the windowing tooltab: center and width, and minimum and maximum. The parameters you see will depend on how RA 600 has been configured.
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98 chapter 4 The Auto setting You will always find a pre-defined setting called Auto in the drop-down list. This applies values optimized for all the images in the series by finding the maximum and minimum pixel values of your image and by selecting window center and width values that span this range. Auto windowing is also automatically applied if no pre-defined windowing settings have been stored for your images.
If you open a study and cannot see any images, this may well be because the windowing values saved with the study have been inappropriately set. You can then select the Auto setting in the drop-down list on the Windowing tooltab. This will optimize the window level settings so you will be able to view the images.
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Removing (deleting) predefined settings Just as you can create pre-defined settings, you can also remove (delete) them. To remove pre-defined windowing settings select the settings you want to remove in the drop-down list on the Windowing tooltab. Click the Del button.
99 If you wish, you can also have RA 600 save presets not only for a particular modality but also for a particular body part. Then, if you are viewing an UltraSound series with body part Abdomen for example, you will only see presets created for viewing US images of abdomens in the list on the Windowing tooltab. To create a windowing preset for a body part when viewing a study of the appropriate body part, adjust the windowing levels (center and width) to the values you want to use for the preset. On the Windowing tooltab, click the Add button. In the Add Window Level dialog box, make sure the Body part specific check box is checked. RA 600 will create a new set of presets for the modality and the body part. For example, for a CR study of the Wrist, your presets will be included in the CR, Wrist set. Stopping using body-part specific presets Once you have selected body-part specific presets for a particular kind of study (such as SC, Abdomen or NM, Heart for example), new windowing levels will always be saved body-part specific without asking you. If you no longer wish to save windowing levels body part-specific for a particular body part, remove all the windowing presets previously saved for this body part (select them from the drop-down list on the Windowing tooltab and click the Del button). RA 600 will then save presets without regard to body part (specific only to the modality), unless you check the Body part specific check box again.
If the Body part specific check box is grayed out and you cannot check it, it may well be that a body part has not been defined for the study. To identify body parts, RA 600 uses the Body Part Examined DICOM tag. This tag must have been defined for the study you are viewing. Try another study for which the body part has been defined in this way. You can check in the Data Selector which studies have body parts defined by adding a Body Part Examined column to your local view See Changing patient and study list headers on page 79 for details.
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You can create more than one ROI inside the viewport by repeating this procedure. Then RA 600 will use the last active ROI for optimizing windowing. When you have finished using your ROI, you might want to remove it. To remove an ROI used to optimize windowing select Delete on the pop-up menu. right-click within the ROI and
Inverting images
The Windowing tooltab also allows you to invert (display the negative of) the gray scale of your images (set the Scope to change some or all the images). To invert an image check the Invert check box on the Windowing tooltab.
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The option is disabled if you open a study whose modality is not suited for this option, RG and SC for example.
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Panning
When you zoom or magnify images in your viewports, they will become larger than the viewport itself. Panning (moving the image within a viewport) then becomes important. This is very easy to do by dragging within the viewport. To pan (move the image around) within a viewport click (with the left mouse button) within the viewport and hold the mouse button down. The pointer will change into a hand icon . Now pan the image by dragging in the desired direction. Panning and Scope options If the Scope option is set to One Series, Study or All, images within other viewports will be updated in the same way. If you just want to pan one viewport, make sure Scope is set to Viewport.
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Grouping buttons in a concentrated area can increase the speed at which you work because you do not have to move your mouse across the Viewing Section to navigate through your images. Removing all buttons from the Viewing Section creates additional space which you can use for viewing images.
On the General tab of the Viewing Properties dialog box, click the Configure button in the Viewing Area section. Left click the arrow on the drop-down list in the Navigation Buttons dialog box and make the proper adjustment:
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What it does
Hides all buttons that could otherwise appear in the vicinity of your images. Displays buttons above your images. Shows buttons below images. Displays the Up button at the top of the Viewing Section and the Down button at the bottom of the Viewing Section.
Remaining in the Navigation Buttons dialog boxes, select the types of buttons you wish to see by left-clicking in one or more of the following check boxes beneath the drop-down list (this option will be active only if you have selected the Above Viewport or Below Viewport options). Option
Up Image Down Image Up Series Down Series Previous study Next study Back to data selector
What it does
Brings you to the image preceding the current image in a series. Scrolls to the image following the current image in a series. Takes you to the series preceding the series you are viewing. Lets you view the series following the series you are viewing. Displays the study preceding the study you are viewing. Shows the images of the study following the study you are viewing. Returns you to the Data Selector.
Exit the Navigation Buttons and Viewing Properties dialog boxes by clicking OK.
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Pinning images
You cannot pin images that are part of a cine loop. If you are printing or sending images, you will not be able to pin images in viewports while you have the Virtual Film Sheet/Compose Send Job dialog box on your screen (double-clicking then performs a different function).
When you are examining a series you may have an important scout or reference image which you would like to keep on your screen while you browse through the rest of the series. RA 600 lets you do this by pinning images in your viewports. When an image has been pinned in a viewport it will remain in place and unchanged while the images in the other viewports change. The image is truly frozen. It will stay just as it is even as you pan, zoom, window or filter the other viewports. To pin an image in a viewport double-click in the viewport.
A thumb tack symbol will appear in the top left corner of the viewport to indicate it is pinned. You can pin as many viewports as you like.
An icon appears in the top left corner when you pin an image
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Key notes
Out of the many images in a study there are often just a few which contain the key diagnostic information a physician may need. RA 600 lets you mark these key notes so that you (and others) can subsequently view just them rather than the whole series. Like presentation states, a key note can be saved with a study as an individual DICOM entity that can be distributed across a network.
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108 chapter 4 To mark an image as a key note hold down the Ctrl key and right-click in the viewport showing the image you want to mark. A key icon will appear in the top left corner of the viewport to indicate your selection. To remove a key note from your selection hold down the Ctrl key and right-click the viewport containing the key note. The key icon will disappear. Once you have created key notes you can save them for later viewing.
If right-clicking in the viewport while holding down the Ctrl key does not appear to work, RA 600 may have been set up for compatibility with previous versions. Try holding down the Ctrl key and using the left mouse button instead. If you find you are still unable to add or remove key notes, the study you are working with has been set to a particular status, such as Authorized, which does not permit key images to be changed. You will also not be able to create and store key notes if you do not have suitable user rights on your system.
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109 3 In the Add Key Note dialog box, select a Label for the key note you want to save and supplement it with a Description if you wish. Click OK. Select the key note from the drop-down list if you have made more than one key note in a session. Then click the Modify button to change the label or description of the key note. You click the Delete button to remove the key note altogether.
You can identify a key note in the Data Selector by expanding to series level the study to which the key images belong, provided you have added the Modality column to series level. A key note at this level will have the modality KO. You can delete key notes from the Data Selector by rightclicking on them and selecting Delete from the pop-up menu or by pressing the Delete button on the keyboard. To view key notes from the Data Selector double-click on a study to which key notes belong. You can also open the study up to series level, right-click on the key note and select View from the pop-up menu. This also works at image level. If you open a study (by double-clicking on its study icon for example) that has one or more set of key notes, RA 600 will display the most recent set of key notes first. You can select a different set of key notes from the Key Notes drop-down list on the Layout tooltab. If you open multiple studies, the content of the Key Notes drop-down list will change when the study in the active viewport changes. Viewing only key notes in the Viewing Section While you are viewing a study which has key notes, you can decide to view just these key notes or the whole study. To view just the key notes in a study check the Key Images only check box on the Layout tooltab (with this icon). Similarly, you can view all the images in a study rather than just the key ones by unchecking this box.
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While the Zooming and Flip/Rotate tooltab provides detailed control over zooming, you can quickly zoom in very conveniently if the image you want to examine in more detail is in one of many viewports on your screen. To expand a viewport to fill the whole viewing area hold down the Shift key and right-click in the viewport. (Repeat to return to your previous view.)
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112 chapter 4 If you click Relative, the image in the selected viewport will be shown in the selected viewport relative to the size at which the image will just fit in the viewport no matter what size the image was originally (this is how RA 600 displays images by default in the viewports). Clicking Absolute means that at, a zoom factor of 1, the image will be displayed in the active viewport so that one pixel of the image when it was acquired will be represented by one pixel on the screen, hence at absolute size. Clicking the True Size radio button will display the image in the viewport at its actual size, so you can take a ruler and measure the image on the screen and these distances will be the same as those that would be measured on the patient. See Viewing images at their true size on page 184 for more on this.
True size display requires calibration of your monitor or monitors. If this option is grayed out, it may well be that your system is not properly set up for true size display. See Viewing images at their true size on page 184 or consult your system administrator for more information.
Zoom quality
When you zoom in, RA 600 will often have to generate new pixels to fill in the gaps in the zoomed image. You can choose between two ways in which RA 600 does this using the radio buttons in the Quality section of the Zooming Flip/Rotate tooltab. Normally RA 600 uses Linear Interpolation for zooming since it typically provides a smoother and more natural image. Pixel Replication, however, renders what was originally captured more faithfully.
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To remove a magnifying glass click the close button corner of the magnifying glass window.
113 The magnification produced by a magnifying glass is always in addition to any zooming which has been set on the Zooming Flip/Rotate tooltab. You can create as many magnifying glasses as you like at the same time.
Although you can resize magnifying glasses, you cannot examine more than one viewport with the same magnifying glass. Also, the glass does not work on the Pictorial Index.
Windowing inside magnifying glasses You can window within magnifying glasses. This works in just the same way as for windowing in a viewport (see Windowing images on page 96). Either hold down the right mouse and drag or right click and select from the pop-up menu. You can select from one of the available presets or invert the image. You can also show or hide image annotation shown in the magnifying glass (right click on the magnifying glass and select Image Annotation from the pop-up menu).
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RA 600 includes a number of image processing filters to remove noise and enhance small structures. You can apply these filters to an image in a viewport by using the Filtering tooltab (with the icon). To apply a filter to an image first click the viewport containing the image you want to filter. Then click the button for the filter you want to apply on the Filtering tooltab. Reset resets your image. The effects of any filters previously applied to the image are removed and the image reverts back to its original condition. Median is useful for removing noise from images and can effectively filter out very high or very low pixel values. The filter looks at the pixels surrounding a pixel (3x3 neighborhood) and displays the median value of these pixels. Minimum tends to shrink structures in images (it produces an erosion effect). Like the Median filter, it looks at surrounding pixels (3x3 neighborhood). It displays the minimum value of these pixels. Maximum tends to grow structures in images (it produces a dilation effect). Like the Median and Minimum filters, it looks at surrounding pixels (3x3 neighborhood). It displays the maximum value of these pixels. Smoothing is a differentiating kernel filter which effectively smooths images. It softens hard or rough edges in images. Sharpening is a kernel filter which increases the visibility of small lines and fissures which may otherwise be difficult to spot. Shadowing is a kernel filter that has the effect of casting a shadow across the image, tending to enhance the visibility of small structures. Enhance Edges also increases the visibility of small lines which might otherwise be difficult to see. It does this to a greater extent than the Sharpening filter, but also produces more overall distortion in the image. Detect Edges clearly reveals changes in an image but produces an even greater amount of distortion which typically means that the image will need to be windowed after it has been used.
To increase the effect of a filter simply apply it more than once to the image. You can also combine the effects of filters by applying one after another. If you show the same image twice on the screen (using pinning for example), you can apply different filters to it and compare the results. So, for example, you could examine the different effects of the Sharpening and Edge Enhancement filters.
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The automatic display of a sequence of images and the effect of motion this creates can greatly assist in the diagnostic process. RA 600 allows you to quickly create and manipulate such cine loops. A cine loop is a continuous, sequential display in a viewport of all the images (or a subset of them) in your study or series. You can run cine loops in a number of viewports at the same time. And you can even adjust the windowing level and pan and zoom in the viewport while a cine loop is running. You create and control cine loops using the Cine tooltab (with the camera icon). This lets you turn cine loops on and off, take manual control of the cine loop, decide how the cine loop should play, set the speed the cine should play at and select which images should be in the cine
Although you can exert a great deal of control over your cine loops, creating them is very easy since, with the click of a button, RA 600 will automatically start playing a cine with suitable values. Using the Cine tooltab, you can then adapt the cine more precisely to your wishes while it is playing. The changes will take effect almost instantly, so you can see the effect they have and fine tune as necessary. To create (and play) a cine loop make the viewport you want to use to display the cine active (click inside it) then click the On radio button on the Cine tooltab. To stop a cine loop make sure the viewport containing the cine loop you want to stop is active (click inside it) then click the Off radio-button on the Cine tooltab. The viewport will revert to the image it held prior to hosting the cine. If you open a new study or exit the Viewing Section while a cine loop is still running it will be stopped automatically by RA 600. Up, down and bounce You can decide how you want the cine loop to play and repeat itself by using the Up, Down and Bounce radio buttons. If you click on the Up button, the cine will start playing from the last image through to the first and then repeat. Clicking on the Down button will make the cine play from the first image to the last and then repeat. Bounce means that the cine will play from the first to the last and then reverse the playing order and play from the last to the first and then repeat.
117 Setting the speed On the Cine tooltab you can set the speed (in number of images per second) you would like the cine loop to play at. Playing cine loops fast will place significant demands on your hardware and, especially if you are playing more than one cine loop at the same time, the actual speed will be determined by what your systems hardware is capable of. Slider for cine speed The Cine tooltab has a slider control so you can easily adjust the speed of cines. Under the slider, RA 600 displays the speed you requested and the actual speed RA 600 is managing to achieve with your system hardware. Selecting a range of images for the cine Unless instructed otherwise, RA 600 will include in the cine all the images in the series that the image in the viewport is part of. You can easily change this, however, so that you only see the particular range of images you are interested in. To do this you can use either the Cine tooltab or, more conveniently perhaps, the cine loop bar which appears at the right side of the viewport when the cine plays. To adjust the range of images in a cine loop either change the numbers in the Maximum and Minimum boxes on the Cine tooltab or click the cine loop bar where you want the loop to begin and end (the blue bar will adjust in length to show what range is currently selected).
To maximize display speed, set the zoom factor to 1x absolute. Setting the annotation level to None also allows a higher frame rate (see Annotating images on page 122). For magnification factors other than 1x absolute, setting the Quality to Pixel Replication on the Zooming Flip/ Rotate tooltab will also help improve display speed.
If you are tagging a cine of a multi-frame image, the Tag Cine Images dialog box will look somewhat different. You will only see columns for Index Number and Frame Number.
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For additional control, you can decide to operate a cine manually. This will result in a manual cine loop, also known as stack-mode display. To create a manual cine loop make the viewport you want to use to display the cine active (click inside it), then click the Manual radio-button on the Cine tooltab. As with automatic cine loops, the cine loop bar appears on the right of the viewport. You can then play the cine by dragging the cine loop bars pointer. You can also adjust the range by clicking on the bar where you want the cine to begin and end.
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If all the radio buttons in the Link Cines section of the Cine tooltab (or the options on the right mouse button menu) are grayed out (disabled), this probably means that only one cine has been created (create at least one more cine). If just some of the options are grayed out, this will be because RA 600 disables all options which, for whatever reason, are not possible (see Which method should you use? on page 120 for more on this).
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120 chapter 4 To start and link multiple cines select the viewports you want to start the cines in (hold down the Ctrl key as you click on the viewports or the Shift key to select a range - see Setting the Scope to a selection of viewports on page 91 for details). Right-click on a viewport and select Cine Link and then By Image No., By Index No., By Acquisition No. or By Slice Location.
RA 600 provides a number of methods for linking cine loops. This is because it uses DICOM information stored with the images to synchronize them, but this information may not always be usable. Slice location, for example, only applies to CT and MR studies, while neither Image No. or Acquisition No. are mandatory in DICOM, hence may or may not be included with the images in the cines you want to link. Even if they are, there may be other technical reasons why the numbers are not appropriate for linking cines. From the options available, you should be able to find a suitable way of linking your cines (you can always link by frames, see below). RA 600 will perform checks to see what possibilities there are for the cines you may want to link, and disable the radio buttons of the linking methods which are not possible for the cines which are being displayed. Which method should you use? Generally, if the cines are of CT or MR series, it is best to link by slice location. The cines are then linked according to relative positions in the body and thus truly synchronized. If, however, this is not possible, it is recommended that you try linking by image number. You will then see when viewing the cines if there are missing images in any of the cines, and generally the images and synchronization will accurately reflect the actual positions in the patients body. Linking by acquisition numbers (the numbers which reflect the actual order in which images were acquired) is also a possibility. If none of the above methods is possible, you should always be able to link by index number since cines are then essentially synchronized according to their position as shown in RA 600 Pictorial Index. Any inherent offsets and missing images in the original series will not, however, be apparent if you choose this method.
If when you attempt to link using a particular method the radio button immediately jumps back to its unselected state, this means that, although this method passed RA 600 initial tests, RA 600 was still unable to create a link for some reason. Please try another method.
121 To change the offset between linked cines 1 Make sure the cines are in manual mode and there is no link between them (break a link between the cines by clicking the Off radio button in the Link Cine section of the Cine tooltab). Drag the sliders in the cine viewports to align the images you wish to coincide when the cines are playing. Establish the link between the cines by clicking the appropriate radio button in the Link Cines section of the Cine tooltab. Click the On radio button in the Cine section of the tooltab if you want the cines to play automatically.
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Annotating images
Cutlines are another form of annotation which can be shown, saved and printed. See Displaying cutlines on page 163 for details.
With RA 600 you can add all kinds of annotation to images to indicate points of interest, for example. Such annotation is created on top of the image you are annotating, hence the original image data is not affected. All your annotation - such as text, markers, measurement tools and ROIs - will remain in the same relative position on the image even if you pan or zoom. Once annotation has been created, it can be displayed or hidden, saved with the study or deleted. To create annotations, use the Annotation and Measurement tooltab (with the ruler icon) while in the Viewing Section.
Patient annotation
If lossy compression has been used, a non-erasable message stating the compression method and ratio is displayed in every image.
In addition to annotations you create yourself, RA 600 will automatically display essential patient information with every image in the viewports. This is derived from the DICOM 3.0 data file or was entered via the keyboard during acquisition. The layout and contents of the annotation can be configured or adjusted for each modality by the system administrator or your distributor. Typically the patients name, date of birth, patient number, nature of the study and image number are shown. The displayed information cannot be altered, but you can reduce or even completely hide it while viewing your images in the viewports. To change the patient information displayed in the viewports click the Annotation and Measurement tooltab (with the ruler icon). Click the None, Basic or Full radio button in the Annotation Level section of the tooltab.
The None option which removes all annotation allows you to view images without names on them. In some countries it is however forbidden to make diagnoses using images without this information.
Adding markers
You can place one or more arrows (markers) on an image to point out details of interest. To add a marker click Marker on the Annotation and Measurement tooltab and then on the location in the viewport where you want to add the marker. A colored arrow appears with a cursor that allows you to enter accompanying text next to the arrow.
123 To change a marker double-click on the text to edit it. Change the length and direction of the arrow by dragging its tip or tail with the mouse. Click on the center of the arrow and drag or move it around without altering its direction (if you have also entered text, this will automatically follow the arrow movement). Click with the right mouse button on either the text or arrow and select from options to change the color, line style, font, or text.
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You may have images that have overlays associated with them. These can be thought of as transparent sheets that can be placed over the image and typically show information such as cutlines or annotations. RA 600 lets you view such overlays if your images have them. To show image overlay information right-click on an image that has an image overlay associated with it and select Annotation Show Image Overlay from the right mouse button menu. Repeat these steps to hide the overlay.
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Using probes
Probes allow you to measure point values within a viewport. To use a probe click the Probe button on the Annotation and Measurement tooltab. Then click on the location within the viewport where you want the probe to go. A colored probe appears with the numeric pixel value next to it. Drag the probe to move it to its precise location. If the modality is CT, the value shown is in Hounsfield Units. If you right-click on a probe you can change the color and font of the probe (or delete it) using the right mouse button menu.
In the Viewing Properties dialog box click the Viewport Annotations tab. In the Layout section of the tab, select a modality from the Modality Type drop-down list. (The Default setting applies to modalities not defined in the Modality Type drop-down list.) Make sure you select the appropriate Annotation Level radio button to which you want the caliper to apply. Select Basic if you want the caliper to appear with a partial annotation set, or Full if you want it to appear with a complete annotation set. Select the Show caliper check box at the bottom of the Layout section.
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128 chapter 4 6 Click OK and open a study of the chosen modality for viewing.
To manually display a caliper in the Viewing Section 1 2 Click the Annotation and Measurement tab in the Viewing Section. In the Annotation Level section, make sure either the Basic or Full radio button has been selected. (If the None option has been selected, RA 600 will gray out the Show Caliper check box, making the caliper unavailable.) Click the Show Caliper check box.
There are also alternative ways of displaying a caliper. Right-click on a viewport and select Annotation from the right mouse button menu that appears. Create a shortcut to display the caliper (Tools Shortcut keys) Select Image Annotation Section menu bar. Show Caliper Customize
Measuring distances
You can measure distances very accurately using RA 600.
In accordance with the DICOM standard, distances are measured in millimeters for CT and MR studies and for some CR images. CR images sometimes have explicit or implicit pixel size information. If at all possible, RA 600 will use this information to calculate and display distances in millimeters or inches rather than units.
To measure a distance click the Distance button on the Annotation and Measurement tooltab. Then click on the location within the viewport from which you want to measure. Then click the point where you want to measure to. To adjust the positions of the start and end points, click and drag on them. Zoom if necessary for very fine adjustment. (You can also move the whole line by clicking on its center and dragging.) Setting your units of measurement You can select whether you wish RA 600 to display measurements in inches or in millimeters. You can do this using the Windows Control Panel, or you can overrule the Control panel and specify within RA 600 which system should be used.
129 To change the units of measurement using the Windows Control Panel doubleclick Regional Options in the Windows Control Panel. Click the Numbers tab and select U.S. or Metric from the Measurement System drop-down list. Then click OK. In the Data Selector, select Configuration Generic... from the menu bar. On the System tab, make sure REGIONAL SETTINGS is selected from the System Measurement drop-down list. To override the Control panel and set the units of measurement within RA 600 in the Data Selector, select Configuration Generic... from the menu bar. On the System tab, select either US or METRIC from the System Measurement drop-down list. If the units of measurement are changed while a study is open, the change will come into effect the next time you create or modify a measurement. Configuring distance units for measurement lines You can set the minimum pixel distance between two units of distance on a measurement line. To configure the distance units of a measurement line 1 2 3 4 5 Select Configuration bar. Viewing... from the Data Selector menu
If you have secondary capture images (SC), from a film digitizer for example, your distances will be in units i.e. the number of pixels along the line. However, if there is a caliper on the image, you can right-click on the measurement and use the right mouse button menu to calibrate. This will allow you to measure in millimeters or inches.
In the Viewing Properties dialog box, select the Image Annotations tab. Check the Show check box in the Tickmarks section if you want to adjust the default distance units of the caliper. In the Min. Pixels per Tick list, enter the minimum number of pixels you want to display between two distance units on the caliper. Click the Default Value button if you want to use the standard RA 600 pixel value (10).
Viewing profiles
With RA 600, you can also view profiles. A profile is a graph of pixel value distribution along a given line. To create a profile click the Profile button on the Annotation and Measurement tooltab. Move the mouse over the viewport. Next to the mouse pointer you will see a small green graph symbol. Now draw by clicking on the starting point and dragging the line in the desired direction. As soon as you do this the Profile graph appears.
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130 chapter 4 You can modify the graph by stretching the line or changing its direction. If the graph window obscures a part of the viewport you would like to see, move it to a different location by clicking on its title bar and dragging. To remove the profile window click on the close button in the top right hand corner of the Profile window. To make the Profile window reappear, click on the line again. Comparing multiple profiles by pinning You can pin profile windows by clicking their Pin buttons (in the top left corner of the window). This allows you to create and compare multiple profiles. Clicking a second time on the Pin button releases the profile.
Measuring angles
You can also measure angles in much the same way as distances.
COBB measurements are particularly useful for small angles and when the intersection point is outside the image area.
To measure an angle click the Angle button or COBB button on the Annotation and Measurement tooltab, then click in the viewport. You can resize angles and drag them around. Angle and COBB measurements are in degrees.
This is not the same function as the ROI button on the Windowing tooltab.
131 Click the Polygon button and then in the viewport to create a multiple-sided ROI. Keep your left mouse button pressed while drawing a straight line. At the point where you want an angle to appear, release your mouse button and click it again. Now draw a second line in a different direction. Repeat the process as many times as you like to create a polygon. To close the ROI, either click once with the right mouse button or double-click with the left mouse button. The two ends will be connected. You can edit a polygon ROI by dragging its angles or by clicking inside it.
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Copying annotation
To prevent annotations ending up directly on top of each other and hence completely hidden from view, RA 600 does not paste annotations in exactly the same place, but displaced by two pixels from the original location. When copying annotations to a whole series or study, you should be sure this is really what you want to do. To avoid the possibility of inadvertent loss of annotations, RA 600 does not provide an easy way to remove all the annotation you add using copy and paste.
To copy annotation from one viewport to another right-click on the annotation and select Copy from the right mouse button menu. Move the mouse to the other viewport and right-click again. Select Paste Paste from the right mouse button menu. A copy of your annotation will appear in (almost) the same relative location in the second viewport. This means that you could, for example, create a probe or an ROI in one viewport and copy this to (almost) the same location in the image in the other viewport and then compare probe or ROI values between the viewports. You can even copy annotation to all the images in the series you are working on, or indeed all the images in the study if this contains multiple series. To copy annotation to all the images in a series or study right-click on the annotation and select Copy from the right mouse button menu. Move the mouse to the other viewport and right-click again. Select Paste Paste to All Images in Series or Paste to All Images in Study from the right mouse button menu. You can even copy all the annotation you have placed in a viewport with a single click of the mouse. To copy all the annotation in a viewport right-click on the viewport and select Annotation Copy All from the right mouse button menu. Then right-click in the viewport you want to copy it to and select Paste Paste.
Moving annotation
Instead of copying annotation, you may wish to move it from one viewport to another. You do this in exactly the same way as copying annotation, except you select Cut or Cut All rather than Copy or Copy All from the right mouse button menu. You can also paste the annotations you have cut in this way in all the viewports in a series or study.
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When you are producing reports, you may often wish to refer to your annotation. RA 600 makes this easy for you by automatically creating labels for your annotations and measurements. These labels are unique to the study you are working on and can be saved along with your study and report. They can readily be viewed (or hidden) at any time. To show (or hide) your annotation labels check (or uncheck) the Show Labels check box at the bottom of the Annotation and Measurement tooltab. Each item of annotation or measurement is given a unique label based on the order in which it is created. To further aid recognition, labels can be given prefixes to indicate what type of annotation or measurement they refer to. You could, for example, then have labels such as ROI3, Probe7, COBB4 etc. To set prefixes for the labels you create select Configuration Viewing... from the Data Selector menu bar. On the Image Annotations tab of the Viewing Properties dialog box, make sure the Add Prefix check box in the Label Creation section is checked and enter suitable prefixes in the fields provided.
RA 600 will only create labels for annotation you add after you have set it up to create labels. It will not add labels to annotation you created previously or annotation by another user, since the report might already refer to these labels.
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In many cases it may be important to know who added particular annotation and when. RA 600 allows a record of such information to be automatically added to and stored with the study. This information, created and kept for each item of annotation, can be readily viewed at any time. You can include any or all of the following: Who created the annotation (based on the Windows user name). The date and time the annotation was created. Who last modified the annotation. The date and time the annotation was last modified.
To include user information with your annotation select Configuration Viewing... from the Data Selector menu bar. On the Image Annotations tab of the Viewing Properties dialog box, make sure the appropriate check boxes are checked in the Show User Info section. To show (or hide) the user information check (or uncheck) the Show User Info check box at the bottom of the Annotation and Measurement tooltab. You can also show or hide the user information using the check box in the Additional Information section on the Image Annotations tab of the Viewing Properties dialog box.
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You can have only one mask or overlay in a viewport at any one time, so if you want to add a mask or an overlay to a viewport that already has one, you will have to remove the old one first. To do this, rightclick on the mask or overlay and select Delete from the right mouse button menu. (You can also simply drag the mask or overlay outside the viewport.)
137 The Polygon button lets you create a multiple-sided area. Keep your left mouse button pressed while drawing a straight line. At the point where you want an angle to appear, release your mouse button and click it again. Now draw a second line in a different direction. Repeat the process as many times as you like to create a polygon. To close the mask, either click once with the right mouse button or double-click with the left mouse button. The two ends will be connected. You can edit a polygon mask by dragging its angles or by clicking inside it. If you are adding an image overlay, you will need to add the image to be overlaid when you have finished creating the overlay area. See Adding and adjusting overlay images on page 138.
You can show and hide your masks and overlays using the radio buttons in the State section of the Mask tooltab. To make a mask or overlay visible click the Activate radio button. click the None radio button.
The Show button In addition to the Activate and None radio buttons, there is also a Show radio button on the Mask tooltab. This lets you show the outline of the mask or overlay area, but without the actual mask or overlay being actively displayed. This is particularly useful when moving and resizing mask and overlay areas. For example, if you select Show rather than Activate before drawing a shutter, you will see outline of the shutter area but will still be able to see the rest of the image in the viewport, making it easier to position the mask exactly where you want it. When you have finished creating your shutter, click the Activate radio button to make only the image inside the viewport visible. To remove (delete) a mask or overlay right-click on it and select Delete from the right mouse button menu, or simply drag the mask or overlay outside the viewport.
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138 chapter 4 A copy of your mask or overlay will appear in (almost) the same relative location in the second viewport. You can even copy masks and overlays to all the images in the series you are working on, or indeed all the images in the study if this contains multiple series. To copy annotation to all the images in a series or study right-click on the mask or overlay and select Copy from the right mouse button menu. Move the mouse to another viewport and right-click again. Select Paste Paste to All Images in Series or Paste to All Images in Study from the right mouse button menu.
Saving masks
It is not possible to save image overlays. When overlaying images, the bits allocated must be the same for both images. You will not be able to overlay an image with a different bit allocation.
You can save your shutters and inverted window ROIs with a study for later viewing. To save shutters and inverted window ROIs for later viewing make sure the Presentation States check box is checked in the Save Data dialog box and the Current Presentation State section has been completed when you stop viewing the study.
139 You can insert any image from any study visible in the Pictorial Index. Adjusting your overlay images To let you create the best possible view for comparing the image in the viewport with the overlay image, you can adjust the image inside an image overlay in a number of ways. To pan the overlay image click and drag inside the overlay area.
Because clicking and dragging in the image overlay pans the image in the overlay you cannot, unlike shutters and inverted window ROIs, click and drag to move the overlay around in the viewport. To do this, you can only click and drag near the edge of the overlay area. Clicking and dragging on the actual edge of the overlay area will resize the area.
To resize (zoom) the overlay image click and drag the Zoom slider in the Image Overlay section on the Mask tooltab. You can also independently window the overlay - see Windowing overlays on page 139 for details.
Windowing overlays
You can window the image inside an overlay by right-clicking inside the overlay and dragging, in just the same way as when normally windowing in viewports. Moving the mouse to left and right adjusts width, moving it up and down adjusts center. When you window inside an overlay in this way, the remainder of the viewport will always remain unaffected. You can, however, choose to synchronize windowing so that any changes you make to the windowing in the viewport will also affect the overlay image. To do this, make sure the Synchronize Windowing check box in the Image Overlay section on the Mask tooltab is checked. If this box is unchecked, any changes you make to windowing in the viewport will not affect the overlay.
You can place the slider somewhere in the middle to view both images at the same time or, by rapidly moving the slider from one end to the other, switch between the two images.
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Using plug-ins
Plug-ins can be used to change, enhance or extend the operation of RA 600. You can install DICOM-based plug-ins to work with RA 600 if you want it to display images differently than it otherwise would. The plug-ins operate at series level and, when running, RA 600 supports them with tooltabs, menus and hanging protocols. Once you have installed a plug-in, you can use the RA 600 interface to configure it (RA 600 does not come with a standard plug-in). For detailed configuration information, see the RA 600 Installation and Configuration Guide. To view images with a plug in 1 Open a study from the Data Selector. In the Viewing Section, click on the Layout tooltab (with the Swiss Army knife icon) to view the list of available plug-ins. Select a viewport in the series area that you want to use for the plugin. In the Select Plug-in Definition section of the Layout tooltab, double-click the plug-in and view the results in the selected viewports. If necessary, click another plug-in to view the images in yet a different way or select a new series area and repeat this step using the plug-in of your choice. Select RA 600 Series Area from the Select Plug-in Definition section of the Layout tooltab to turn off the plug-in and return the image to its original view before the plug-in was activated.
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The plug-in is automatically integrated into the RA 600 interface. This means, for example, that you can use the Up and Down buttons to scroll through images and select images in the Pictorial Index for display in the viewport. When the plug-in is active, an extra tooltab appears in the Viewing Section. The tooltab contains features which enable a user to work with the plug-in; e.g., options to change the colors or font of text. It is also possible to open an additional plug-in in another series area of the Viewing Section.
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142 chapter 4 Hanging protocol integration You can assign one or more hanging protocols to a particular plug-in so that you can quickly and easily view images in a very specific way. This keeps you from having to define a hanging protocol each time you want to view images with a particular plug-in. To define a hanging protocol for a plug-in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Select Viewing Manage Hanging Protocols... from the menu bar in the Data Selector. Click the New... button in the Hanging Protocols Manager (Viewing) dialog box. In the Hanging Protocol Editor (Viewing), specify a name for the hanging protocol in the Name field. Make sure the Series radio button has been selected in the Edit mode section. In the Layout section of the dialog box, click the button that corresponds to the hanging protocol you want to assign to the plug-in. Select the plug-in from the drop-down list in the Series and Image Properties section. Click OK in the Hanging Protocol Editor (Viewing) dialog box and then in the Hanging Protocols Manager (Viewing) dialog box to save your work.
In the Data Selector and the Viewing Section, plug-in hanging protocols are displayed in the Viewing and Layout tooltabs, respectively. If a hanging protocol is marked with diagonal lines, it is associated with a plug-in. If you place your cursor over such a hanging protocol, RA 600 will display in a tool tip the name of the plug-in to which the hanging protocol belongs. You can apply the hanging protocol and its plug-in by selecting a study and clicking on the hanging protocol.
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Structured reports
RA 600 allows you to create structured reports which you can send, query on, modify and receive etc. Treated as a separate item from the images with which it is associated, a report can be sent on its own over the network so you can view, amend and save it without needing to receive and send the images as well. This can greatly reduce network traffic. You can write reports while in the Viewing Section or in the Data Selector. The reports you see will depend on their configuration.
Creating a report
To create or modify a structured report 1 In the Data Selector, right-click the relevant study and select Show Report(s)... from the right mouse button menu.
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144 chapter 4 2 3 Draw up your report in the report window. Click Close and then click Yes in the Save Report dialog box to save your report.
Other buttons in the report window The report window has additional buttons to help you manage reports. Click the View Study button to open the images with which the report is associated. The Print button allows you to make a print out of the report. The Previous and Next buttons enable you to scroll to the following or preceding reports of the next or previous studies in the Data Selector.
You might want to configure RA 600 so that it displays the SR entry in your Data Selector with a certain font or color so you can easily recognize it.
Once you have created a structured report, you can see it noted as SR in the Data Selector when you expand the study with which the report is associated to series level.
Consult the context-sensitive Help, the RA 600 Installation and Configuration Guide or your system administrator for more details on either of these two topics. In RA 600 6.0, reports created with earlier versions of RA 600 (RadWorks, therefore) are rendered in a simpler form than reports created with RA 600 V6.1. So, for instance, a report initially created in RadWorks 5.1 will appear as a single text field that contains the reports contents.
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The Reports Configuration dialog box with three tabs will appear. All the settings for governing the Reports window are made using this dialog box.
Reporting profiles
On the Reporting Profiles tab of the Reporting Configuration dialog box, RA 600 lets you set up a number of reporting profiles which you can then use to display the Reports window in a particular way.
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146 chapter 4 All the profiles configured on the system are shown on the Reporting Profiles tab. Click on a profile to select it. You can view the details of this profile at the foot of the tab. Click New or Modify to create or change a profile. To help save time when creating new reporting profiles, use the Copy button to copy the parameters of an existing profile. You can then modify the configuration and, so, create a new reporting profile. You remove a reporting profile by selecting it with your cursor and clicking the Delete button.
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While viewing images in RA 600, you can readily export them for use in other applications.
Although printing on Windows printers can be useful in various situations, laser or even dye sublimation printing does not offer a print quality comparable compared to that of laser imagers. For far more comprehensive printing capabilities, you should use the Print tooltab in the Data Selector (to print studies or series) or in the Viewing Section (to print selections of images).
TIFF export
You can also export images for use in other applications as TIFF files. To export a viewport image as a TIFF file click with the right mouse button in the viewport of the image you want to export. Select Export TIFF from the right mouse button menu. Specify a file name and location for the file to be saved.
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148 chapter 4 To print a single viewport image right-click in the viewport containing the image you want to print and select Print Image from the right mouse button menu. To print a single viewport right-click in the viewport and select Print port from the right mouse button menu. View-
For more on printing while viewing images, including using virtual film sheets see Printing using virtual film sheets on page 257.
The full contents of the viewport, including annotations, and windowing changes you have made, etc., will be sent to the printer that you selected (for example using the Destination drop-down list on the Print tooltab in the Viewing Section) in a one-up format.
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Presentation sheets
Part of the daily routine in many hospitals is to have morning rounds to discuss clinical cases. During these rounds, only the most important images from a study are presented and discussed, summarizing the study for the participants. RA 600 supports presentation sheets that allow you to place all relevant images from multiple studies on one sheet for presentation purposes. More specifically, it allows you to print a composed sheet to a presentation sheet printer. These virtual sheets are then converted into a new study that becomes available in the Data Selector. You can then select these and previous studies for display (when available on the local database). To create a presentation sheet
Setting up printers is typically a task for system administrators. For detailed information on setting up Presentation Sheet printers, see the RA 600 Installation and Configuration Guide.
View the study or studies you want to use for your presentation sheet (select the item or items in the Data Selector, right-click on one the items and select View from the right mouse button menu). In the Viewing Section, click the tab with the printer the Print tooltab. icon to reveal
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From the Destinations drop-down list, select the printer destination that is specifically set up for presentation sheets; e.g., Presentation Sheets. From the Layouts section, select the appropriate hanging protocol you want to use. In the Viewport, double-click on the images you want to use in the presentation sheets. This will insert them into the virtual sheet in the Compose Print Job dialog box. Click the Submit... button in the Job section of the Compose Print Job dialog box. Click OK in the Print Study to... dialog box. Click the Close button in the Compose Print Job dialog box to exit. Exit the Viewing Section, saving your data appropriately.
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This feature is really intended for creating presentation sheets of the same patient. If a presentation sheet is created from different patients and submitted to the printer, the print job will be saved in the Data Selector under the study first selected.
Search for the presentation sheet in the Data Selector. It will be marked as Presentation Sheet in the Data Selector and can be easily seen if the Description or Study Description column (0008, 1030) has been added to the Data Selector. If desired, have your system administrator setup a worklist view for presentation sheets. This will ensure that RA 600 puts your presentation sheets in one place and give you easy access to them - particularly if your Data Selector is filled with many studies.
Presentation sheets can be modified. To modify a presentation sheet 1 2 3 Open the presentation sheet for viewing. Modify it by windowing or annotating etc. Exit the Viewing Section, making sure to save your work.
Presentation sheets can also be removed from the system. To remove a presentation sheet from the database 1 2 3 Select the presentation sheet in the Data Selector Press the Delete key on your keyboard. Confirm by clicking OK.
Alternatively, you can select the presentation sheet in the Data Selector, rightclick on it with your mouse and select Delete from the right mouse button menu.
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The order in which statuses are entered defines their order in terms of the progression of studies in the workflow. If, therefore you were to enter Printed after Authorized, this will mean that Printed would be higher than Authorized.
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Advanced viewing
This chapter covers some more advanced viewing capabilities of RA 600, such as viewing with multi-monitors, comparing studies, displaying multi-frame images and cutlines, creating and using hanging protocols and using RA 600s ability to display images at their true size.
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Comparing studies and series................................156 Working with multi-frame images ...........................159 Displaying cutlines .................................................163 Working with collages ............................................167 Viewing images as they arrive ...............................171 Monitoring mode ....................................................173 Working with hanging protocols .............................174 The Hanging Protocol Editor in detail.....................178 Default hanging protocols ......................................182 Viewing images at their true size ...........................184
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With RA 600 you have a powerful and versatile tool for comparing studies and series on both single and multiple monitors. It allows you to compare multiple studies or series from the same or different patients, to compare CT, MR (T1/T2 comparison for instance), US studies with color frame-grabbed images, and much more. To use RA 600 to its full potential for comparing studies and series, you should be familiar with opening multiple studies, using different screen layouts, setting the Scope, pinning images, and creating cine loops. All these aspects of RA 600 are covered in the previous chapter Viewing images, but they are briefly described again here as they relate to comparing studies and series.
If you want to open all the series in a particular study, just double-click on the study.
157 Using the Viewing tooltab can save you time because you will not have to select a different hanging protocol once you have opened your selection. To open a number of studies or series at the same time, you should use the layouts in the View section of the Viewing tooltab. The thicker dividing lines on the buttons indicate how the various studies or series will be displayed. Once in the Viewing Section, you will see the various studies and series you selected in the viewports with thick dividing lines in the viewing area and the Pictorial Index to indicate the separation between the studies or series.
Located immediately below the tooltabs, the Scope in RA 600 lets you determine which images certain actions, such as windowing, zooming and panning, will affect. It is particularly useful for comparing studies and series (see Setting the Scope of your changes on page 91 for more details). If the Viewports radio button has been selected, your actions will only affect the active viewport or selection of viewports. If the One Series radio button is selected, then only the active series (the one containing the image in the active viewport) will be affected by your actions. If Scope is set to Study, all the displayed series will be changed in the same way by your actions.
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158 chapter 5 Scope is also important while scrolling through the images using the Up and Down buttons. If Scope is set to One Series, only the active series will scroll. If you set Scope to Study, all the displayed series will scroll in synchronization.
Pinning combinations
When you have an image in a particular viewport that you want to keep in view, you can pin it simply by double-clicking on the viewport (see Pinning images on page 106). You can pin as many viewports as you like with whatever images you like, so you can quite literally display exactly the images you want where you want them in the viewing area.
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Multi-frame images are DICOM images for which the pixel-data space has been extended to be able to contain multiple pictures called frames. All frames in an image share the same DICOM Image header (containing various non-pixel data concerning the image, its circumstances of creation and parameters for optimal viewing). There are various types of multi-frame image. For example, 2D + T multiframes (cine runs) contain sets of 2-dimensional images, all taken on the same coordinates, with different timestamps at more or less fixed intervals (DICOM specifies that the time intervals may differ). They typically show the effect over time of some contrast agent through vessels. One example of these is cardiac cine runs. In 3D multi-frames (slices of a volume), sets of 2-dimensional images are created at (more or less) the same time on different layers or at different angles. These sets look much like CT or MR series, and some are indeed MPR or MIP processed images. An example is the full body scan. There are also combinations of the above types, such as the SPECT gated study. RA 600 supports multi-frame images in many areas such as Nuclear Medicine (including Static, Dynamic, Gated, Tomo, Gated Tomo, Recon Tomo and Recon Gated Tomo), Ultrasound, X-ray Angiography (including bi-plane studies) and Radio Fluoroscopy.
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160 chapter 5 Setting how multi-frames initially appear in the Pictorial Index It may well be that you almost always want to have multi-frames depicted in the Pictorial Index in same way when you initially open a study of a particular modality (such as XA or NM). You can set up RA 600 to do this. Select Configuration Viewing... from the Data Selector menu bar and make the appropriate adjustments on the Modalities tab of the Viewing Properties dialog box.
By setting the Scope to multiple viewports, you can quickly start a number of cines, particularly useful for certain NM studies. See Setting the Scope to a selection of viewports on page 91 for details.
Click on the Modalities tab in the Viewing Properties dialog box. Select one of the three settings from the Cine Mode drop-down list in the Multi-Frame section: Auto, Detect or Manual.
A Cine will start automatically when the Cine Mode adjustment has been set to Auto and the Pictorial Index to One Frame Only (Configuration Viewing Pictorial Multi-Frame images Initial layout). The Cine will start as soon as a Multi-Frame image is clicked on in the Pictorial Index. The Mode Detect will start a Cine automatically if the Recommended Frame Rate is detected in the image information. Select Manual if you want to start cines manually for the modality.
161 You can also set up automated hanging protocols to have cines of multi-frame images automatically start when the images are opened for viewing (do this by setting the cine property of a viewport to on in the hanging protocol using the Hanging Protocol Editor see The Hanging Protocol Editor in detail on page 178). Annotations and the magnifying glass while viewing multi-frame cines When you are working with a cine in manual mode, you can closely inspect individual frames using the magnifying glass and even add annotation to just one frame.
When a multi-frame image is shown fully expanded in the Pictorial Index, you can work with it in very much the same way as you would a series of normal single-frame images. Click on one of the frames in the Pictorial Index, and this image and whatever subsequent images will fit in the viewports will appear in your viewing area. The usual viewing features are supported for frames. A single viewport will behave like it contains a single-frame image. Hence you can, for example, window each individual frame (depending on your Scope setting). You can also add annotations to individual frames.
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Teleradiology
If you insert series in a virtual film sheet while working with multiframe images, you should be aware that RA 600 will create a great many sheets if the multiframe image contains a large number of frames. In extreme circumstances, this may cause RA 600 to run out of memory.
Multi-frame images can be sent by RA 600 in just the same way as other images. In DICOM the smallest entity is, however, an image, so it is not possible to send individual frames of a multi-frame image using teleradiology.
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Displaying cutlines
Cutlines are often also called scoutlines for CT images, planning lines for MR images or, in general, intersection lines.
RA 600 displays a Cutlines tooltab (with this icon) in the Viewing Section which you can use to display intersections between two planes. You can display cutlines, provided your study has images suitable for this. They must, in particular, be part of CT or MR studies. If they are not, the cutline option is disabled.
If you enter the Viewing Section and the scout image is in the active viewport, you can show or hide a cutline set by checking the check box in the Cutline Sets section of the Cutlines tooltab (with this icon). The Cutlines tooltab also has an All and a None button which you can click on to show all or none of the available cutline sets. If you display a series of cutlines by clicking in a Cutline Set check box, RA 600 enables a number of additional options for working with cutlines. Click the All Images radio button if you want to display in the active viewport all the cutlines representing all the images in the series of images. Click the Displayed Images radio button if you want to display in the active viewport only the cutlines representing the images you actually see in the Viewing Section. Click the None of the Images radio button if you want to remove from the active viewport all the cutlines representing all the images in the series of images. Check the Show First And Last Cutline check box to display in the active viewport only the first and last cutlines within a set of cutlines. Note that RA 600 displays the first and last cutlines of a series of images even if you select either the Displayed Images or None of the Images radio button. Check the Show Labels check box if you want to display on both sides of the cutlines the labels made for the image. RA 600 will also display labels in a tool tip when you place your cursor on a cutline in the active viewport regardless of whether the Show Label check box has been turned on or off.
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The reason that the series of the image in the viewport itself is also tested when determining what cutlines there are is because this series may contain images that are nonparallel and therefore offer cutlines.
Click on the Cutlines tab in the Viewing Properties dialog box. In the Color and Line Style section, select from the Default dropdown list the color you want to apply to the cutlines when they are initially displayed. Use the adjacent drop-down list to define the type of line you wish to see; e.g., solid or dash. Select from the Displayed Images drop-down list the color you want the cutlines to be when they have been selected in the active viewport of the Viewing Section. Use the adjacent drop-down list to define the type of line you wish to see; e.g., solid or dash.
165 5 Select from the Active Image drop down list, the color you want a cutline to be when you activate an image in the Viewing Section. Use the adjacent drop-down list to define the type of line you wish to see; e.g., solid or dash. In the Label Font section, click the Set Font button. Once in the Font dialog box, define the Font, Font style, Size and Script with which you want to display labels and then click OK. In the Properties section define what you want RA 600 to display by default when you check a Cutline Set check box in the Cutline Sets section of the Cutline Tool bar. In the Compose Set Description section, indicate how you want to be able to identify a series of images in the Cutline Sets section of the Cutline tooltab; e.g., by series number, study description or body part etc. Check the Show Image Information check box if you want RA 600 to display image information. Use the Compose Label section to determine how you want to denote series and images on labels. Select from the first drop-down list the way you want to denote a series on a label. Use the second drop-down list to select a separator. Select from the third drop-down list the way you want to denote an image on a label.
To view the image represented by a cutline pin the viewport containing your cutlines (to prevent it being replaced). Click on the cutline of the image you want to show. The corresponding image will be displayed with as many subsequent images as will fit in the remaining viewports on your screen.
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You can show cutlines in more than one viewport at a time. For each viewport, you simply select the appropriate check boxes in the Cutline Sets section of the Cutline tooltab (with this icon). If more than one set is offered, you can display as many of them as you like in the viewport.
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Creating collages
To use images from different studies or patients in the same collage, you must open all of the necessary studies in the Viewing Section.
When you create a collage, you open the appropriate worklist items in the Viewing Section. You make whatever changes you need to the images and then add them as a collage. To create a collage 1 In the Data Selector, open the appropriate studies for viewing. (To open multiple studies hold down the Ctrl or Shift key and select the studies. Then right-click one of the selected studies and select View from the right mouse button menu.) In the Viewing Section, scroll through the images and make whatever changes you wish to make to them (windowing etc.). If necessary, select the layout you wish to apply on the Layout tooltab (with the Swiss army knife icon). Click the icon to bring the Collage tooltab to the top and then click the Add... button. In the Add Collage dialog box, enter a name for the collage in the Title field and any comments on the collage in the Comment field. Click the OK button. When you leave the Viewing Section (or open another study in the Viewing Section), make sure that you click the Yes button in the Save Data dialog box to save the collage.
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You must click the Yes button in the Save Data dialog box. Otherwise your collage data will not be saved.
The collage will now be available in your local database. (For a workgroup server configuration, the collage will be available in the local database of the workgroup server and thus to all workstations connected to the workgroup server.)
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Presenting collages
In the Data Selector, collages appear as separate series with the modality COLLAGE within the study the collage is of. Collages containing multiple studies appear as separate series in each of the studies. To open a specific collage in the Data Selector Open the study for which you created the collage, then double-click the series with the modality COLLAGE that has the appropriate collage name before it. The collage will open up, using the same layout and presentation states as when it was saved. To open another collage in the Viewing Section select the Collage tooltab (with the icon), then a previously created collage from the list and click the Apply button.
In the Data Selector, you can use the filter check boxes in the Modality section to only view studies that contain collages.
In the Add Destinations dialog box, enter a Name (for example Collages only), Description, Host Name and make sure that the Presentation States, Key Images and Other IODs check boxes are checked. Click the Next > button and then Finish.
169 A collage for a plug-in series area. Linked cine settings. Cutline settings. Settings for tooltabs, Pictorial Index, reports, worklists and toolbars. The state of the reports window (the usual report selection functionality may or may not select the same reports on different workstations for the same collage). Collages for more than one monitor group.
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You can put a study you are currently viewing on hold while you open and view another study (a stat or consultation for example). This might be useful if you are performing some routine work and a case which immediately requires your attention comes in, such as an emergency exam. You can quickly switch to the new study, process it and, when you have finished viewing it, save it and return to the previous one exactly as you left it. To put a study on hold to view a different study (STAT exam) right click on the new study you want to view in the Data Selector (Local Studies) window. (If you cant see Data Selector window while you are in the Viewing Section, select Layout Show Data Selector from the menu bar). From the pop-up menu, select View STAT Exam. You can also click on the study in the Data Selector window to select it and then select Study View STAT Exam from the menu bar. This is not possible during a Receive New Study action.
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You can open and start to view studies whose images are not (yet) all on your system. While you are viewing such a study, the Pictorial Index will be constantly updated to show the new images as they arrive. It could be that some of the images you want to view are not on your local system and need to be transferred to your system over a network. Or it could simply be that, for whatever reason, new series or images are added to a study while you are viewing it. After you start viewing a study, RA 600 will immediately add any new images from that study that are received to the Pictorial Index so that you can view them if you wish.
You will be taken to the Viewing Section and can start viewing the study. If the study is of a significant size, and depending on the speed of your network connection, it may take a little while for all the images to arrive on your workstation. While these images are arriving, you can view the images that have already been received. Your Pictorial Index will continually update itself with the new images as they arrive if you are using a DICOM connection. (With an AMI connection, the Pictorial Index will not update and show the images until all the images have been received.)
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172 chapter 5 To directly view a worklist item containing images that are not local right-click on the worklist item and select View from the pop-up menu, or double-click on the item. If your selection contains a worklist item that contains at least one study that is not in the local database, a dialog box will appear listing the various items and indicating whether they are held locally or remotely. This allows you to specify which study items you want to view. Locally held images will display immediately, while remotely held ones may take a little time to arrive on your system. Once you have specified which items you want to view, you will be taken to the Viewing Section and can start viewing the images. If you also asked to view remote images, these will be shown in the Pictorial Index as soon as they arrive.
It could be that you never want your Viewing Section to be updated while viewing studies. You can turn off the direct viewing of images as they are received. Note, however, that this will turn off all the features relating to viewing images as they arrive, such as monitoring mode and directly viewing images from a remote view. To do this, select Configuration Viewing... from the Data Selector menu bar and make sure the Direct View check box is not checked on the Machine tab of the Viewing Properties dialog box.
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Monitoring mode
All the time you are in monitoring mode, newly received images will be added to the Pictorial Index and be placed in your systems memory ready to be viewed. If you stay in monitoring mode for some time and receive a large number of images quite quickly, you could end up with a very large number of images which may slow performance and your system could potentially run out of memory. You should periodically save (or discard) studies that arrive in monitoring mode. If your system does run out of memory and you need to restart RA 600, the studies containing the images that were received will still appear in your local view. If you cannot see the Receive New Study item on the Viewing menu or on the right mouse button popup menu, monitoring mode has not yet been enabled on your system. To enable it, select Configuration Viewing... from the Data Selector menu bar and make sure the Direct View check box is checked on the Machine tab.
If you are waiting for a new study to arrive, you can put RA 600 in monitoring mode. This is typically used when receiving newly-created studies from a modality. After entering the Viewing Section in monitoring mode, no images will initially be displayed. When images arrive from the origin you have selected, the Pictorial Index will update itself with the images. All subsequent images from this origin will be added to the Pictorial Index as they arrive and for as long as you are in monitoring mode. These do not have to be images from the same study or series. If images from a second study or series start arriving, RA 600 will also show these in the Pictorial Index as a separate study or series. To go to the Viewing Section in monitoring mode select Viewing Receive New Study from the menu bar in the Data Selector (or right click in your local view and select Receive New Study from the pop-up menu). In the dialog box that appears, select the origin from that drop-down list the you want to receive studies from.
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175 Even if you have automatically opened studies or series with a hanging protocol (or opened a study with another layout), you can change the layout of the viewports at any time by selecting a hanging protocol on the Layout tooltab in the Viewing Section. To manually select a hanging protocol when viewing a study click the button for the hanging protocol you want on the Layout tooltab (with this icon).
You can make multiple selections in the list of hanging protocols in the Hanging Protocols Manager for copying, disabling, deleting and exporting. This works just like in Windows (hold down the Shift and/or Ctrl key while clicking in the list).
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176 chapter 5 To disable a hanging protocol select Viewing Manage Hanging Protocols from the Data Selector menu bar. In the Hanging Protocols Manager, select the Automated hanging protocols radio button. Then click on the name of the protocol you want to disable. Then click Disable.
Once you have done this, you can copy the file to another system ready for importing. To import automated hanging protocols select Viewing Manage Hanging Protocols from the Data Selector menu bar. In the Hanging Protocols Manager, select the Automated hanging protocols radio button. Then click Import....In the Import Hanging Protocol to XML file dialog box, specify a name for the file (or use the Browse button to locate one) and click Import.
177 Automated hanging protocols are sophisticated tools for displaying studies in particular ways, but can be also be complex to set up. To make it easier for you to create them, RA 600 includes wizards that cover the most important parts of the process. Unless you are already an expert in setting up hanging protocols, the wizards should greatly speed the set-up task. To create or modify an automated hanging protocol using wizards select Viewing Manage Hanging Protocols from the Data Selector menu bar. In the Hanging Protocols Manager, select the Automated hanging protocols radio button. Then click the New... or Modify... button. In the Hanging Protocol Editor, enter a name for the protocol if you are creating a new one, and click Wizard. Follow the on-screen instructions and refer to the on-line help as necessary. You can also create and modify hanging protocols fully manually. You may wish to do this if you are expert in creating them, or for fine-tuning purposes after you have used the wizards to create something close to what you want. To manually create or modify an automated hanging protocol 1
If you are creating a hanging protocol similar to an existing one, you can save time and effort by using this as a basis for your new hanging protocol. Select the similar hanging protocol and click the Copy button. Then select the copy that RA 600 creates and modify it as necessary.
Select Viewing Manage Automated Hanging Protocols from the Data Selector menu bar. In the Hanging Protocols Manager, select the Automated hanging protocols radio button. Then click New or Modify.... If you are creating a new protocol, in the Hanging Protocols Editor, type a name for the hanging protocol in the Name field. Create a layout for the hanging protocol using the Layout section of the Hanging Protocol Editor. Use the Series and Image radio buttons to add boundaries between series or viewports (images). Click on a button and then click in the layout area to add boundaries. To clear the layout area, click the box button and then on the layout area. Assign properties and criteria to viewports and series using the Hang Criteria and the Series and Image Properties sections of the Hanging Protocol Editor. Use the Series and Image radio buttons to apply properties to a series area or (pinned) viewport (image) area. Select from the drop-down lists, click on a button and then in the layout area. Modify the General Viewing Modes section as required. If you want to fine tune the hanging protocol or specify data selection criteria, click Fine Tuning (see Fine tuning your hanging protocols on page 181).
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Once you have defined your viewport and series layout for your hanging protocol, you can specify hang criteria for areas of your layout. The hang criteria determine at which positions in the layout certain image data will be displayed. They can be formulated using DICOM tags or by specifying a time order. You could, for example, decide that a scout image should always be displayed in the first viewport of a series, or that the first series area displays images with contrast bolus agent and the second series area displays images without contrast bolus agent. Or, using a time order, that a series area displays images from the least recent series. For a DICOM criterion, you select one of the DICOM tags from the dropdown list, enter the required value and assign it to a series area or a pinned viewport area by clicking the DICOM button and then on the area. To assign a time ordering criterion, you again select from the drop-down list, click the clock button and then on the area you want to assign the criterion to in your layout.
DICOM tags can be added to the drop-down list in the Hang Criteria section of the Hanging Protocol Editor. Contact your system administrator or RA 600 distributor for assistance.
If your Design Scope is set to Series (the Series radio button is active), the Pin and Cine options in the Area Properties section will not be available. This is because these properties can only be assigned to viewports. Likewise, if you select the Image radio button, the plug-in option becomes disabled. You can only assign the Window, Zoom and Annotation properties to a viewport if the viewport is pinned or has the cine property assigned to it.
You can have RA 600 automatically orientate images (based on the orientation information in the DICOM header of the images). Select valid orientations from the drop-down lists and use the orientation button to do this. If the button is disabled, you have selected an incompatible pair of orientations from the drop-down lists.
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180 chapter 5 You can have a viewport (image) pinned by using the pin button. In this part of the Area Properties section you can also activate cutlines (if a study or series has them) and select which cutline sets are to be shown (see Displaying cutlines on page 163). Finally, you can have a cine start in a particular viewport by using the cine button. Select the speed and direction using the drop-down lists.
Since a viewport cannot be both pinned and have a cine running it, if you apply a pin to a viewport which already has the start cine property assigned to it, the pin property will replace the start cine property. Conversely, if the viewport is pinned and you then apply the start cine property to the viewport, the start cine property will replace the pin property.
How to see what hang criteria and properties you have applied
When you assign hang criteria and properties to areas, small squares appear in these areas. The colors signify: Yellow: DICOM tag criterion White: time ordering criterion Green: windowing Pink: zoom factor Gray: annotation level Red: pin image Orange: orientation Blue: start cine
You can find out more about what has been assigned to an area simply by moving your mouse cursor over the area in the layout. The details of assigned criteria and properties will appear in the window immediately underneath the layout.
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In the General Viewing Modes section of the Hanging Protocol Editor, you can state whether only key images should be shown (see Viewing key notes on page 109 for more on this). You can also specify the initial Scope setting when the images are opened for viewing (see Setting the Scope of your changes on page 91). So, for example, if you prefer to always have the Scope set to Viewport while viewing ultrasound images, in your hanging protocol you would check the Scope check box and select Viewport from the dropdown list. You can also set up how the Viewing Section will initially display. By checking or unchecking the remaining check boxes in the General Viewing Modes section, you can show or hide the tooltabs, Pictorial Index and the Data Selector and Reports windows when the Viewing Section opens.
Maximize the Hanging Protocol Fine Tuning dialog box when working on your scripts.
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When you are viewing images, your viewports can be arranged in all kinds of ways. In fact, the possibilities are unlimited. In addition to automated hanging protocols, RA 600 is installed with a range of standard layout options, or default hanging protocols. These are available as buttons on the Viewing tooltab in the Data Selector and on the Layout tooltab while you are viewing images. In the Data Selector, you select the default hanging protocol you want to use when you open studies or series for viewing. To select a default hanging protocol for viewing a study in the Data Selector, click on the study you want to view to select it. Then click the button for the default hanging protocol you want to use on the Viewing tooltab (with this icon).
To create or modify a default hanging protocol 1 2 3 Select Viewing Manage Hanging Protocols from the Data Selector menu bar. In the Hanging Protocols Manager, select the Default hanging protocols radio button. Then click New or Modify.... Use the Hanging Protocol Editor to create or modify your hanging protocol.
You create default hanging protocols in just the same way as automated hanging protocols (see The Hanging Protocol Editor in detail on page 178).
183 Disabling and removing default hanging protocols You can readily remove (delete) default hanging protocols in the Default Hanging Protocols Manager. To remove (delete) a default hanging protocol select Viewing Manage Hanging Protocols from the Data Selector menu bar. In the Hanging Protocols Manager, select the Default hanging protocols radio button. Click on the name of the layout you want to want to remove from the list and then on Delete. Sometimes you may want to stop a default hanging protocol appearing on the Viewing and Layout tooltabs and right mouse button menu, but without deleting it so you can reinstate it at a later time. You do this by disabling the protocol. To disable a default hanging protocol select Viewing Manage Hanging Protocols from the Data Selector menu bar. In the Hanging Protocols Manager, select the Default hanging protocols radio button. Click on the name of the layout you want to want to disable and then on Disable.
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With RA 600 you can display images at their true size. This will allow you to make measurements directly across the screen to measure actual distances in the patients body. To view images at true size click the True Size radio button on the Zoom Flip/ Rotate tooltab in the Viewing Section (or select from the right mouse button menu). With the True Size radio button selected, you will not, of course, be able change the zoom factor, though you will still be able to use magnifying glasses to view small detail. Note that if the True Size radio button is grayed out, it probably means your monitor (or at least one of the monitors on a multi-monitor system) has not been calibrated yet. RA 600 will not be able to compute the real size, and the true size option will not be available if the images you want to view are not calibrated (i.e. pixel spacing is not present or 0). See the Installation and Configuration Guide for details on how to calibrate your monitor (this can only be done by an administrator).
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Starting MPR and MIP ...........................................187 Manipulating your view...........................................189 Looking at slices through your MPR/MIP view.......192 Creating MPR and MIP cine loops .........................194 Speed versus image quality ...................................197 Using volumes of interest (VOIs)...........................198 Enhancing, measuring and annotating images ......199 Using the Pictorial Index for MPR/MIP...................200 Saving your MPR/MIP images ...............................202 Saving cine loops ...................................................203
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MPR and MIP image processing will only be available if this module has been installed on your system. If it has, you will see an MPR item on the Data Selector menu bar and the MPR/MIP tooltab.
A 600 harnesses the computing power of todays workstations to provide new ways of looking at medical imaging data. This can help give you additional insight during viewing and diagnosis. The two approaches used by RA 600 are known as MPR (Multi-Planar Reformatting) and MIP (Maximum Intensity Projection). These both work with series of images evenly spaced directly above each other, hence essentially forming a three-dimensional volume. These series are typically produced by CT and MRI scanners. MPR in effect allows you to slice through and view this three-dimensional volume along a direction other than that of the original images. You might want to convert transversal image ranges to sagittal or coronal, for example, although the new direction may be at any angle to the original direction. In fact, by creating a cine loop which generates images displaced by successive amounts along a particular direction, you will automatically create the images for such a conversion. MIP provides what is essentially a three-dimensional view of the image range. RA 600 casts imaginary rays through the image volume. Along these rays, it finds the maximum pixel value and displays these as though projected onto a plane. These maximum values tend to indicate specific structures such as bone or blood vessels. The effect is similar to looking at a translucent 3D model of the subject. You can freely rotate this along any axis and so view the subject from any angle. As with MPR, RA 600 lets you make MIP cine loops. An MIP cine loop in which you change the viewing angle by successive amounts creates the impression of the subject rotating in front of you or, at higher zoom factors, of flying round the object.
You can also create cine loops involving rotation when using MPR. This effectively makes it appear as though you are passing through the image space. It does not, however, have much intuitive significance or diagnostic value.
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You may also see a warning message if the series contains information which is barely suitable for MPR/MIP. You will then be asked if you want to proceed anyway. (See Requirements for MPR and MIP.)
If you are opening a study containing more than one series for MPR or MIP (or in some cases just a single series), there may be times when RA 600 finds more than one series or different sets of images within a series which meet the criteria for MPR and MIP. If this happens, you will see a dialog box asking you to specify which set of images should be used. If RA 600 finds only one set of images suitable for MPR and MIP, it will immediately open this for viewing.
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188 chapter 6 The viewing area is divided into four viewports. Top left, top right and bottom left are the three orthogonal views of the image volume: Coronal, sagittal and transversal. The bottom-right viewport is where the MPR or MIP results are shown. Each of the three transversal, coronal and sagittal ports has cross hairs which you can drag and rotate to adjust your view in the MPR/MIP viewport. You will also see a Pictorial Index on your screen. You can add images of interest to this for later viewing during your current MPR/MIP session and even for saving for future reference. The small viewport, located at the bottom of the screen when RA 600 is installed but easily draggable to a different position, contains a cube which provides an intuitive view of how you have rotated the image volume and the orientation of the new viewing plane. The cube represents the dimensions of the 3D image data you are working with. There are also (usually located on the right of the screen) the familiar RA 600 tooltabs. These allow you to select MPR or MIP, reset the viewed image to a default direction, set the action performed by dragging the mouse, create and play cines, and adjust image quality, pixel range, windowing, etc. The Reset button underneath the tooltabs resets your viewports and takes you back to original settings when you first started MPR/MIP. The Back button closes MPR/MIP and returns you to where you started MPR/MIP from (the Data Selector or Viewing Section).
If you cannot see a Pictorial Index on your screen, this is probably because it is empty. Until you actually save some images in it, RA 600 may hide it from view.
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The three orthogonal (transversal, coronal and sagittal) viewports allow you to adjust your viewing plane (and hence your view in the MPR/MIP viewport) in all three directions. Each port has a set of cross hairs which represent the planes of the other two directions. Hence the vertical cross hair in the transversal viewport represents the sagittal plane and the horizontal cross hair the coronal plane. In addition to the vertical and horizontal cross hairs, there is a third line with a handle (a small circle). This line shows the intersection of the oblique (MPR or MIP) view with the image in the viewport. You can drag the handles to rotate the lines in their viewports. This rotates the viewing plane about the same axis as the viewport. So, if you rotate the cross hair in the transversal viewport for example, the viewing plane will rotate about the transversal axis. By moving and rotating the various cross hairs in the three orthogonal viewports, you can view any cross-section from any direction you wish in the MPR/MIP viewport.
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190 chapter 6 You can move the cross hairs to the left or right (vertical cross hair) or up and down (horizontal cross hair) by clicking on them and dragging. This changes the position of the viewing plane in the orthogonal direction represented by the line. So, if you drag the vertical cross hair in the transversal viewport, you will see the view in the sagittal viewport change to reflect the repositioning of the cross hair. Drag the horizontal cross hair in the transversal viewport and the coronal viewport will change. By clicking close to the intersection of the two cross hairs, you can move both at the same time. While you are dragging, the cursor will change to indicate that you are moving a cross hair. Dragging elsewhere in one of the orthogonal viewports If you click elsewhere in one the orthogonal viewports than on a cross hair and drag, the cursor will turn into a hand and you can pan within the viewport in the usual way. Returning to a well-defined section After moving any of the cross hairs, you can always return to a well-defined section in any of the viewports by clicking the Transversal, Coronal or Sagittal button on the MPR/MIP tooltab.
The blue intersection lines with handles also indicate progress with calculating the MPR/MIP images. They become dashed lines while RA 600 is computing and turn to solid when the new image is displayed. This is most noticeable on relatively slow systems.
If you rotate a single blue intersection line, the image in the MPR/ MIP viewport will be single oblique. If you rotate more than one blue intersection line, three blue intersection lines will be visible in the orthogonal viewports, and the image in the MPR/MIP viewport will be double oblique.
191 Selecting Rotate About Both Axes allows you to rotate the image cube about both its horizontal and vertical axes by dragging up and down or left and right or in some combination of these. Rotate About Viewing Direction means that when you drag left or right in the MPR/MIP viewport the image cube will rotate about the axis you are viewing from. Move Along Viewing Direction means that when you drag up or down in the MPR/MIP viewport your viewing plane will move towards or away from you. By combining these actions (and with a little practice!) you will be readily able to view any cross-section of the image cube from any angle.
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193 5 Click the << Slice and Slice >> buttons to rotate the image backwards and forwards.
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If you have a transversal set of images and you want to create a set of sagittal ones (or any other combination of orthogonal directions), this is very easy to do using Quick Setup. Start MPR/MIP with the series you want to convert, then click the Sagittal button on the MPR/MIP tooltab. The MPR/MIP viewport will show the sagittal view of the image volume. Now click one of the translation buttons in the Quick Setup section at the foot of the Create Cine tooltab, and then on Create. Once the cine has been created, click Save.
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While quick setup provides a quick and easy way to create MPR/MIP cines, you can use the controls on the Create Cine tooltab to create precisely the cine you want to see. In the Cine Creation section, you can select the type of cine you wish to create (rotation or translation) or turn off and discard a cine you have created (with the Off radio button). The total distance of the translation or total angle as set by you in the viewports is shown at the top of the Cine Settings section. Below this, you can specify the change in angle in degrees (for rotation cines) or the step in millimeters (for translation). RA 600 then divides this into the total distance or angle to report the number of frames (images) that the newly created cine will contain. Normally it may take RA 600 a few seconds to perform all the calculations required for a complete cine. If you want to view the cine immediately as it is being created, check the Display Cine Creation check box. Once you are happy with your settings, use the Create button to create your cine. When a cine is created, the Create button is replaced by Add and Save buttons that allow you to add your cine to the Pictorial Index or immediately save it as a series within a new study (see Saving cine loops on page 203 for details). To create precisely the MPR or MIP cine you want to view 1 2 3 4 5 Manipulate the cross-section until you are happy with the image in the MPR/MIP viewport as the first image in your cine. Click the Translation or Rotation radio button on the Cine Creation tooltab. Manipulate the cross-section until you are happy with the image in the MPR/MIP port as the last image in your cine. Set the size of the steps (distance or angle between images) under Cine Settings (hence also defining the number of images in the cine). Click Create.
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196 chapter 6 You can also save any cines you create while using MPR/MIP for later reference, even on systems that do not have MPR/MIP capability. See Saving cine loops on page 203 for more on this.
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MIP in particular requires a considerable amount of computing power. If your system appears to be sluggish and you are having to wait unduly for images to display, you can lower the quality of the MIP images RA 600 produces to improve performance. The quality level can be modified at any time, so you might, for example, set the quality to Low while you set up an appropriate view, and then switch the quality to High to gain the best view of the image. You set the quality of your MIP images using the Quality tooltab. This also contains an Automatic check box. When this is checked, RA 600 will start by creating images at relatively low quality and then, if there is enough time, it will generate images of progressively higher quality. To adjust the quality / speed of display of MIP images click the Quality tooltab (with the sliders icon). Select Low quality (high speed), medium quality or high quality (lowest speed), or check the Automatic check box.
Since MIP demands significant computing power, images are rendered by RA 600 with progressive quality. This means that it produces a quick (and less precise) version of the image to provide a first impression, and then recalculates the image at progressively higher quality levels when time permits. Even if you want to use MIP, use MPR first when selecting a pixel range (since this will display faster). Switch to MIP once you have found appropriate values.
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While you are using MPR or MIP, you can also create volumes of interest (VOIs). RA 600 will then only consider image data within this volume. This can be of particular help in the diagnostic process with a CT scan of the head, for example, you can select just one part within the head, effectively allowing you to look inside the skull which will not be displayed. To create a volume of interest (VOI) check the VOI check box on the Quality tooltab (with the sliders icon). Drag the boundaries of the VOI which appear in the orthogonal viewports to define the VOI you want. Click and drag within the VOI to move the VOI (click and drag outside the VOI to pan in the viewport).
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The Pictorial Index on the MPR/MIP screen is similar to that found in the Viewing Section, except that it also acts as a kind of clipboard to which you can add any image shown in your viewports for viewing at a later time.
If you start MPR/MIP while in the Viewing Section, you can readily add the images you are interested in to the MPR/MIPs Pictorial Index and switch back from MPR/MIP to the Viewing Section. The MPR/MIP images will be available in the Pictorial Index in the Viewing Section (as part of a new series) for further processing (with filtering for example), annotation, etc.
The contents of the MPR/MIP viewport will be replaced by the image you click on.
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What you need for teleradiology ............................206 Receiving series and studies .................................207 Monitoring the receive process ..............................209 Sending images using the Data Selector ...............210 Working with study management ...........................212 Monitoring and controlling the send process..........214 Setting priorities and sending in an emergency .....215 Looking in detail at what you have sent .................218 Sending from the Viewing Section .........................220 Compression in teleradiology.................................222 Sending studies automatically................................225 Storage commitment ..............................................228
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206 chapter 7 eleradiology allows you to send series, studies, images or image-related data to another RA 600 or other DICOM 3.0 compliant system. Lossless compression is used as standard and there are elaborate built-in checks to ensure that the data received is exactly the same as the data sent. In addition, the whole process of sending and receiving data can be monitored and checked at a later stage. You will generally routinely send studies while you are in the Data Selector, but you can also quickly send selections of images while in the Viewing Section as and when required.
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You can also select Connection Receive Log from the Data Selector menu bar to view your Receive Log.
Your Receive Log will appear. This will show you all the studies or series you have received along with various details about them and the transmission. You can scroll and resize the columns to view all the information. All successfully received studies are displayed in the Data Selector unless there is already a study present in the list with the same DICOM UID (Unique IDentifier). This prevents confusion as a result of double entries in your study or patient list. Also, studies will be displayed in the study or patient list only when they have been completely received and checks have verified the integrity of the transmission. For security reasons and for the protection of both users and patients, RA 600 will never accept and display partially received or unchecked data. If a study consists of a number of series and the remote site decides to send one series or even a smaller selection of images first and the rest at a later stage, then all series received that belong to the same study will be placed automatically in the relevant study folder in your study list.
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208 chapter 7 To view more details on an entry in the Receive Log click in the first (Origin) column of the entry to select it and then click Details.
To select an entry in the Receive Log, you must click the entry in the left-most column. You can also double-click on the left-most column of an entry to view the Receive Log.
RA 600 can be configured to automatically remove (delete) the oldest log entries when your receive log reaches a certain size (the default is 500 entris). To check if your system is using this feature and perhaps to enable or disable it, select Configuration Connection Service, click the Maintenance tab and then the Help button for further information.
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The Remaining column in the Receive Queue dialog box is shown only if the remote system supports this. Otherwise a - is shown.
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You can send images from your system to another RA 600 system or other DICOM 3.0 compliant system. Like receiving, sending happens in the background. You do not even need to run RA 600 to be able to send studies. You generally send images while you are working in the Data Selector. You do this by using the Send section of the Teleradiology tooltab (with the telephone icon). This section includes a list of possible destinations, a Send button, a display of information on the progress of your transmissions and buttons to let you view your Send Queue and Send Log. To send a study or series from the Data Selector 1 Select the study or series in your study or patient list (select multiple studies and/or series by holding down the Ctrl key or by using the Shift key to select a range). In the Destinations pane, select the site or sites to which you want to send one or more images. Click Send. In the Send to dialog box, specify the format you would like to use from the Format drop-down list (and use the Compression Parameters drop-down list if you have specified some form of compression). Make sure the Send Immediate check box is checked if you wish to send immediately. If you want to send at a later time, uncheck the Send Immediate check box and enter a time in the Transmission Time fields. If you wish the study or series to be deleted from your system after it has been sent successfully, make sure the Delete After Send check box is checked. Check the Study Status ID check box if you want to send the study status ID of the study you have selected for transmission. Make sure the Images check box is checked and select any other Information Object Definitions (IODs) you want to send. See Working with study management on page 212 for more information on this topic.
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The Transmission Parameters section initially shows the default settings for the site to which you are sending data. If you generally transmit data using different settings to these defaults, you can avoid re-entering the settings each time by reconfiguring the teleradiology settings for your destination. Consult the Installation and Configuration Guide or consult your System Administrator for more information on configuring destinations. In many countries call charges for using the public infrastructure (telephone/ISDN lines) are lower during the evening or night. If you routinely send data from your system to others, you may consider it more cost-effective to use this period.
Click OK to send your study, or OK All if you are sending multiple studies and wish them all to be sent with the same parameters.
When you click OK in the Send To dialog box, the job will be sent immediately or at the later time you have specified. If you have selected multiple studies to send, your next job will be displayed. Click OK All if you do not want to alter the transmission parameters for each one of your multiple studies individually. Clicking this button will start the send process for all your studies. Click Cancel to cancel the individual job or Cancel All to cancel all the jobs you were preparing to send. Click Advanced to view a dialog with additional settings. Consult the online Help for more information. Sending parts of studies Typically, you will send complete studies or series using the Data Selector. It is, however, possible to send selected images, although you will not be able to visually check which ones you have selected. If you want to send an individual image or selection of images, you could use the Teleradiology tooltab in the Viewing Section.
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Images
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Because RA 600 can send these particular data elements on their own (i.e., without the image data), it uses less bandwidth, which consequently increases network performance. Other advantages include less likelihood of image corruption and fewer double readings. To send study items to a new destination 1 2 3 4 Select a study in the Data Selector. Select a destination from the Send section of the Teleradiology tab in the Data Selector. Click the Send button beneath the Destinations pane in the Send section of the Teleradiology tab. Check the Send Immediate check box if you want RA 600 to send your image-related data immediately. Otherwise, leave this check box unchecked and specify the time at which you want it to send your images using the Transmission Time drop-down list. In the Options and Send IODs sections, click in the check boxes to indicate the IOD items you want to send. Check the Delete After Send check box if you want RA 600 to remove the items after it has sent them.
If you receive presentation states or key images etc., you will not see an update of the images if you are viewing images in normal mode. If you are viewing images in Direct View mode, the viewing station will display them as they arrive. (See Viewing images as they arrive on page 171 for further information on direct view mode.) When you are in viewing mode, you cannot send a study status ID, just as you cannot send key notes, structured reports and presentation states you have just created.
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In an emergency, it may be important for a particular job to be sent immediately even if there are other jobs in the queue waiting to be sent. You do this by assigning the priority Highest to the job. If there are other jobs in the send queue which also have the priority Highest assigned to them, you will need to change the priority of these other jobs if you are to be certain that your particularly urgent job is sent first. To send a job immediately 1 Click on the study to be sent in the study or patient list in the Data Selector, and click on the destination to which the study is to be sent in the Send section of the Teleradiology tooltab to select it. Then click the Send button. In the Send to... dialog box, make sure the Send Immediate check box is checked and change the send parameters and add notes as necessary. You can set the priority of this job to Highest at this point, or do this later in the send queue (if you do it now, you can skip step 4). To set the priority now, click the Advanced... button and then the Transmission Parameters tab of the Advanced Transmission Properties dialog box. Then select Highest from the Priority drop-down list. Click OK in the Send to... dialog box to submit the job and then the Send Queue button on the Teleradiology tooltab to view the send queue. If you have not yet assigned the priority Highest to the job, locate the job in the send queue (the Patient and Study columns should provide enough information for this - if you cannot see them completely, use the scroll bar along the bottom of the send queue to bring them fully into view). Click in the first (Destination) column of the job which is to be sent immediately and then on the Increase Priority button until the priority is set to Highest. Check the Priorities column of the send queue to see whether any other jobs have the priority Highest. If there are other jobs, select these jobs by clicking in the first (Destination) column of the jobs to select them (hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple jobs) and then click once on the Decrease Priority button to set their priority to High.
217 6 Optionally select the job that is currently being sent (if this is not already your priority job!) and then click the Stop button to halt this transmission and so allow the urgent job to start more quickly. This could be useful if the current job being sent is very large, although RA 600 may well complete the transmission of the series currently being sent before it stops the job. If you have not yet assigned the priority Highest to the job, locate the job in the send queue (the Patient and Study columns should provide enough information for this - if you cannot see them completely, resize the send queue by dragging on a corner or use the scroll bar along the bottom of the send queue to bring them fully into view). Click in the first column of the job which is to sent immediately and then on the Increase Priority button until the priority is set to Highest.
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You can check in detail on what image data you have sent at any time using the Teleradiology tooltab (with the telephone icon). To see what data you have sent tooltab. click the Send Log button on the Teleradiology
Your Send Log will appear. This will show you all the studies or series you have sent along with various details about them and the transmission. You can scroll and resize the columns to view more information. To view more details on an entry in the Send Log click in the first (Destination) column of the entry to select it and then click Details.
To select an entry in the Send Log, you must click in the left-most column. You can also double-click on the left-most column of an entry to view more details on it.
You may well want to keep a permanent record of what you have sent and when. You can do this by exporting the send log information to an external file. To export (save) your send log 1 2 Open the Send Log (click Send Log on the Teleradiology tooltab). Select the entries you want to export (click in the first column of the entry you want to save hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple entries, or the Shift key to select a range of entries). Click Export. In the Export dialog box, enter the name of the file you want to export to in the To File field (or use the Browse... button to locate a file). If required, change the separator to be used between field entries in the exported file.
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219 6 If required, change the list of items of information to be exported (shown in the Exported window). Select items in the Available Fields list and use the Add >> and << Remove buttons to add or remove selected items to and from the Exported list. (You will not need to do this each time you export the contents of the send log RA 600 automatically remembers what settings were used the last time it was exported.) Click Export.
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Open a study from the Data Selector. Click on the Teleradiology tab in the Viewing Section. Select the site in the Destinations list you want to send images to. Click the Send button. Select the viewport containing the image you want to send. Double-click on the viewport. The image will be added to the list in the Compose Teleradiology Job dialog box. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you have added all the images you want to send. Click Submit in the Compose Teleradiology Job dialog box. Adjust the settings in the Send to... dialog box as required and click OK.
The double-click action to pin images to a viewport is temporarily disabled to allow you to select images to send with a doubleclick. If you want to view your send queue or send log, you will have to switch back to the Data Selector and use the Teleradiology tooltab there.
If you want to send a whole series, you do not need to double-click on each image individually, simply click on one of the images in the series and then Insert Series in the Compose Teleradiology Job dialog box. If you decide you dont want to send an image which has been selected for sending, select it in the Compose Teleradiology Job dialog box and then click Delete. You can move the Compose Teleradiology Job dialog box around by clicking on and dragging its title bar. While you can use all the features of the Viewing Section when selecting images to send, you can only send original images. In other words, if you zoom an image or apply a filter before selecting the image for transmission, RA 600 will send the original image without the changes you have made.
221 Permanently saved presentation states and key notes will reach their destination. This means you must exit the study and save it using the Save As dialog box. If a selection has been sent to another DICOM-compliant destination, the images will be stored in the remote database as a DICOM study. If the remainder of the series is sent to the same remote site at a later time, the newly arrived information will be stored with the same study.
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Compression in teleradiology
Teleradiology is, of course, a very powerful tool for distributing image information quickly to where it is needed. Many types of study are, however, very large and telecommunications links often comparatively slow, so studies can take a considerable time to send in uncompressed form. RA 600, therefore, offers a variety of ways of compressing images before sending them (and decompressing them at the other end).
223 If it is used to send images to versions older than 6.0, the actual transfer syntax will consist of a DICOM transfer syntax (DICOM JPEG Lossy), in which case, only unsigned 8- and 12- bit images can be compressed. If you use this option to send images from one version of RA 600 V6.1 to another version of 6.0, the actual transfer syntax used will be a private transfer syntax for images other than unsigned 8- and 12- bit images. In that case, all images can be compressed, except for images containing image overlays. DICOM JPEG Lossless like the lossy version, this is a format which, as part of the DICOM standard, allows images to be readily transferred between different manufacturers' systems. Compression is not as high as for the DICOM lossy format, but image quality is of course not diminished. This transfer syntax can handle 2 - 16 bit, grey-scale images and 8 bit (stored) RGB images (color per pixel). ZLIB a general all-purpose lossless compression method that compresses everything in lossless format. It is based on a private transfer syntax. Run length encoding a new compression method. Used often with YBR images, it is particularly useful for encoding black and white images where the data units are single-bit pixels. It is often used for Doppler ultrasound images. RA 600 V6.1 can only decompress images by means of run length encoding. Wavelet lossy Wavelet compression which produces high levels of compression. It is not part of the DICOM standard and, so, depends on a private transfer syntax. If you use this option to send images to versions older than 6.0, the actual transfer syntax used will be a plain DICOM (3.0) transfer syntax, so images will not arrive in compressed form.
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The results you achieve depend very much on the types of images you send. If you are unsure about which quality factor to use, you may wish to experiment with various settings, using a selection of images which are typical of what you normally transmit. Also note that JPEG and Wavelet quality factors are not interchangeable. For example, a JPEG quality factor of 90 is not the same as a Wavelet quality factor of 90.
How to tell if lossy compression has been used when receiving studies
You can also see whether an image has been compressed by adding the Derivation Description tag (0008, 2111) to the Data Selector at instance (image) level. Adding this tag at this level will also show the quality factor with which an image has been compressed.
It is often of great importance to know whether the images received by a system have been compressed with a lossy form of compression. You will then know that the image is not as it was originally sent, but has lost some detail in the transmission process. Because of the importance of this, RA 600 will always indicate with a non-removable message in a viewport that the image it contains has been lossy compressed. This is consistent with the American FDA recommendations for the display of lossy compressed images.
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As well as sending studies manually, you can instruct RA 600 to send studies automatically when a particular event takes place. This is called auto-routing. A simple and widely used example of this is having studies received by your system forwarded to another system or systems. Doctors might, for example, use auto-routing to forward studies received at a system in the hospital to a system at their practice or home. Or studies could be sent to one destination during office hours and to another system at other times. Apart from forwarding received studies, auto-routing can be used to send sets of newly-defined key images, studies saved after acquisition or viewing, and studies after various events in quality control. To set up automatic routing, see the RA 600 Installation and Configuration Guide.
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Storage commitment
Storage commitment will, of course, only work if the other system supports it. In particular, storage commitment will only work with other DICOM systems. For storage commitment, the receiving system must also be configured correctly. In particular, since it must send back the storage commitment it must know the DICOM connection parameters (host name, AE title and port number) of the sending system. When the receiving system is a RA 600 workstation, you do this by simply adding a DICOM destination to the sending system.
When transferring medical image data from one system to another using teleradiology, it is obviously important to know that the system the images are being sent to has received them correctly before they are removed from the system that sent them. This may, however, not be sufficient to ensure that valuable data is not lost. Suppose, for instance, that the system receives the images okay, but that they are deleted from this system as well shortly afterwards. To deal with this situation, DICOM defined storage commitment. This means that when a system sends images, it can check before deleting its own copies of them to make sure that the images were not only received by the other system but that this other system has also committed to storing those images. It is possible to request storage commitment from a client other than the one to which images have been sent. In practice, this means you can send images to a machine that can subsequently forward the data to an archive, for example. The archive can then open a new DICOM connection and send the commit to the machine requesting storage commitment. The result is fewer transfers over the network and quicker response times. To use storage commitment when sending images 1 2 3 4 5 Prepare your studies for sending in the usual way (see Sending images using the Data Selector on page 210). Before clicking OK in the Send to dialog box, click the Advanced... button. In the Advanced Transmission dialog box, click the Transmission Parameters tab. Make sure the Use Storage Commitment check box is checked. Select from the drop-down list the client from which you want storage commitment if this machine is different than the destination you selected.
229 It may well be that you always want to use storage commitment when sending studies to a specific system. You can arrange this by modifying the properties of this destination. (You will always be able to override this for particular send jobs by following the procedure above for sending images using storage commitment, but by making sure the Use Storage Commitment check box is not checked.)
You can always use storage commitment for a particular destination by setting this option in the destination. You need administrator access to do this. See the Installation and Configuration Guide for information on editing destinations.
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RA 600An overview of the acquisition process ......232 The acquisition screen ...........................................234 Acquiring an image ................................................236 Controlling acquisition devices within RA 600........237 Pre-defining image formats (image types) .............238 Using the clipboard and directly importing files......240 Manipulating and refining your images ..................241 Creating studies using various acquisition types ...242 Organizing your images .........................................243 Adding patient information .....................................244 Saving your study...................................................246 Specific device support ..........................................247
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Acquisition support
RA 600 supports a wide range of acquisition devices. Please refer to your distributor for details on which specific models are supported. Before you can start acquiring images, your system and acquisition devices must be properly installed and configured. Installing acquisition devices can be a complex process and is beyond the scope of this manual. You should also refer to your system administrator or distributor for assistance in this. Importing from the clipboard and graphics files will be available only if these options were selected during installation. If you cannot use these options, consult your system administrator or distributor.
Gather all the images you want to acquire. Digitize a film, grab an image or scan your document, illustration or photograph. Select a region of interest (ROI) and/or manipulate the acquired image as required. Add the selected image or ROI to the study (RA 600 can also do this automatically for you). Repeat steps 2 to 4 for all the other images which are to be added to the same study.
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If you are using a digitizer, you may also want to scan patient cards and enter patient information before you digitize your films.
After you have acquired and processed all the images that relate to a study, add the patient information. Save the study.
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To start acquiring images click the Acquisition tooltab (with the camera icon) in the Data Selector. Then click the Acquire Image(s) button. The acquisition screen has one large viewport in the center, and typically the Pictorial Index on the left and your Acquisition tooltab on the right. Below the tooltab you will see a Save button (to save your acquired images), a Reset button (to undo any processing you have made to your images and return them to their state when first acquired) and a Back button (which you use to return to the Data Selector when you have finished acquiring images).
The center of the screen is where you will view your acquired images, and manipulate and process them prior to including them in the study you will create. The Pictorial Index on the left is where you place each image when you have finished working on it and are ready to acquire the next one. Here you can also rearrange them into the order in which they are to appear later in the study when you save it.
For details on how to configure whether acquired images are automatically added to the Pictorial Index, see Adding images directly to the Pictorial Index on page 236.
235 When acquiring images, you can use five tooltabs. Apart from the acquisition tooltab, you will also see a Windowing tooltab (with the sun icon), a Zooming/Flip/Rotate tooltab (with the magnifying glass icon), an Annotation and Measurement tooltab (with the ruler icon) and a Mask tooltab (with this icon). You use these last four to process and ready your acquired images for inclusion in your study. The worklist window underneath the work area can contain a study list, a DICOM modality worklist or other type of worklist. You can select an entry in this and add the patient information it contains to a newly acquired study, see Adding patient information on page 244.
Depending on what hardware you have connected and how your system is configured, you will see in the Device drop-down list on the Acquisition tooltab a number of devices which may be film digitizers, frame grabbers or document scanners. You may also see two additional options; Clipboard and Graphics file reader which let you paste from the Windows clipboard or include a graphics file in your study (see Using the clipboard and directly importing files on page 240 for more details). Depending on what type of device you select, the buttons in the Acquire section of the Acquisition tooltab will look somewhat different to reflect what you need to do to acquire images using that type of device. You use these buttons to control the equipment you are using to acquire your images.
You need only use the Add button on the Acquisition tooltab if your system has been configured for nonautomatic addition of acquired images. Otherwise, RA 600 will automatically add your images to the Pictorial Index as they are acquired.
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Acquiring an image
You will find all you need to acquire your images on the Acquisition tooltab. The precise details (covered later in this chapter) will differ slightly depending on the type (and model) of acquisition device, but the process is very similar for all types. Depending on how your system is configured, the finished image will be added to the Pictorial Index automatically, or you can define a region of interest or zoom/window, etc., and then add the result to the Pictorial Index. To acquire an image 1 2 3 4 Select which device you want to use for the acquisition from the drop-down list in the top (Device) section of the Acquisition tooltab. Select an image type from the drop-down list at the top of the Image section of the Acquisition tooltab. Make sure your film is loaded, frame grabber is ready, etc. Operate the acquisition device by clicking the buttons in the Acquire section of the Acquisition tooltab.
Once the acquisition process for the image has finished, the image will appear in the large viewport (work area) in the center of the screen.
Images become part of the study you are composing when you add them to the Pictorial Index. RA 600 can automatically add each image you acquire to the Pictorial Index as you acquire them, or you can decide to add these manually. You may opt to do it manually if you want to perform some post-processing on the images prior to adding them to the study. (Even if RA 600 adds the images directly to the Pictorial Index, you will still be able to process and manipulate them simply by clicking on them in the Pictorial Index.) To enable automatically addition of acquired images to the Pictorial Index you need to edit the Acquisition properties. You need to be logged in as a user with administrative rights to do this. See the Installation and Configuration Guide for details.
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The Acquire section of the Acquisition tab lets you control your acquisition device from within RA 600. The buttons you see will depend on the type of device you are using.
or a frame grabber
For single image grabbing you can watch the console of the modality from which you are grabbing. Then you just click Grab when you see an image you want to include in the study you are composing. If you check the Continuous check box, you will see a continuous sequence of images in your work area within RA 600. Click the Add button in the Image section when you want to add a frame to your study. The continuous option is useful for fast grabbing or when there is a considerable distance between the console and your RA 600 system.
or a document scanner
If you have scanned an image and selected a region of interest in it (see Saving only parts of images using ROIs on page 241) and the digitizer you are using supports a high resolution re-scan of the ROI, the text on the Scan button will change to Rescan to allow you to re-scan just the ROI you selected at this higher resolution.
Clicking Scan starts the document scanner (insert the document first). You may need to select an image type first. A progress bar will appear while the document is being scanned and you will also see information on the device status (busy or error).
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The Actual object height field lets you enter the height of the object in real life for a particular image type. The units are set according to the unit settings of the Acquisition module (i.e. inches or cm). If the current image type during a frame grab or a digitalization contains a valid Actual object height, a vertical calibration measurement is displayed in the upper left corner of the image. The length of this measurement reflects the height of the object in real life in units according to the system measurement settings of RA 600 (i.e. inches or mm). If this field is left empty or set to zero, the feature is disabled for that image type.
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A powerful and versatile way of making images available for inclusion in a RA 600 study is to use the Windows clipboard. You can do this with almost any kind of image. One possible use would be to add digital photographs of patients along with other medical information about them. To do this, you again use the Acquisition tooltab. To import an image from the clipboard 1 2 3 4 Open your graphics program and copy the image to the clipboard (often the Copy command in the Edit menu of the application). Switch to RA 600 and make sure you are at the acquisition screen. Select Clipboard from the Device drop-down list at the top of the Acquisition tooltab. Click Paste in the Acquire section of the Acquisition tooltab.
The image will appear in your work area and you can now window, zoom, otherwise manipulate it or define a ROI.
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When you have acquired an image, you can manipulate and post-process them prior to adding them to your Pictorial Index. You use the Windowing tooltab (with the sun icon), Zooming/Flip/Rotate tooltab (with the magnifying glass icon), Annotation and Measurement tooltab (with the ruler icon) and Mask tooltab (with this icon) for this in the same way as when in the Viewing Section of RA 600.
Once you have acquired an image, you can decide to save just part of this image in the study. You do this by creating a region of interest (ROI) on the acquired image. If you have digitized the image and your digitizer allows high resolution re-scans of selected regions of interest (such as the Howtek and Vidar models) you can also re-scan the selected ROI before adding it to the Pictorial Index. To select part of an image using an ROI click Select on the Acquisition tooltab. Click and drag the mouse in the viewport to define the ROI (reposition and resize as desired by dragging the ROI around the viewport or by dragging on a side or corner). Then click Add Selection to place the selection in the Pictorial Index. To remove an ROI click inside it and drag it out of your viewport (work area).
If you have digitized an image, measurements will be in units (i.e. pixels). If the image has a caliper, you can calibrate it in the Viewing Section by using the Calibrate option on the right mouse button menu or clicking Measurement on the Measurement and Annotation Tab. Creating and saving multiple ROIs By repeatedly clicking Select and dragging in the viewport, you can define a number of ROIs. You can then save some or all of these ROIs as desired. To select which one you want to save, simply click on it. It will be displayed in a different color to the others to indicate it is the active ROI. Then click Add Selection. (Repeated clicking of the Add Selection button without selecting individual ROIs will first save the active ROI and then the remaining ROIs in the order in which they were originally drawn.)
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You can easily mix different input from acquisition devices, like clipboard input, digitized input, frame grabbed input and graphics files. You might, for example, like to combine a digitized study with some clipboard input of digital photographs from a digital photography software package. Start both software packages. First digitize the films you need. Then put the first digital photo on your clipboard using the photographic software. Switch back to RA 600, select Clipboard as the device and paste the image into your work space. Repeat the process as required for other photos. You can do the same with scanned reports or patient cards (using document scanning).
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You will almost certainly wish to include some patient information with your acquired study. To speed the data entry process and reduce the risk of error, RA 600 provides a number of ways of doing this automatically using the information from previous studies, a worklist or even a RIS system.
When you start acquisition you can have RA 600 display the Patient Information dialog box with the patient details from a study or patient that you have previously selected in the Data Selector useful if you are preparing a new study for a patient for whom you have a previous study available on your system. To do this, on the Patient Information tab of the Acquisition Properties dialog box (select Configuration Acquisition from the menu bar in the Data Selector to open this dialog box), the Copy patient info from Data Selector check box must be checked. You need administrator access to set this. To add patient information using a previous study on a patient 1 Before starting acquisition, click the patient or study in the Data Selector which contains the patient information you want to use for the newly acquired study. Click Acquire image(s) on the Acquisition tooltab in the Data Selector. In the Patient Information dialog box, check and modify any of the information in the fields and click OK.
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If you cannot see a worklist If you are in the acquisition screen and cannot see the worklist window, make sure the Show Worklist check box on the Acquisition tooltab is checked. If you want to use a different worklist It is possible that a number of worklists are available on your system. You need administrator access to change this, see the Installation and Configuration Guide for details.
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When you are happy with the study you have created from your acquired images and added the patient information, saving your work is simply a matter of clicking the Save button underneath the Acquisition tooltab. If you dont want to return to the Data Selector Once you have saved your acquired study, RA 600 will generally return you to the Data Selector. If, however, you wish to create a number of studies in a session, you can elect to stay in the Acquisition screen after you save your studies so that you are ready to immediately start on the next one. You need administrator access to change this, see the Installation and Configuration Guide for details.
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Advanced printing
RA 600 includes printing capabilities that go well beyond those of most other Windows applications. This chapter covers how you can print series and studies from the Data Selector using a wide range of layouts, monitor and control the printing process and review what you have printed. You might also want to print custom sets of images when in the Viewing Section using virtual film sheets, as well as create your own layouts for printing.
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Printing series and studies with the Data Selector.250 Monitoring and controlling the print process ..........253 Finding out which printers are available.................254 Reviewing what you have printed ..........................255 Printing while viewing images ................................257 Creating custom print layouts.................................260
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250 chapter 9 ith RA 600, you can select and print whole studies or series, in monochrome or color, to DICOM 3.0 compliant laser imagers (or print servers) and Windows printers. Your system can be connected to and configured to work with a number of printers. You will generally use the Print tooltab in the Data Selector (with the printer icon) for routinely printing studies and series. You can, however, also print when viewing images. You then compose virtual film sheets which gives you a versatile way to create print jobs on the fly. Printing is done in the background and will not tie up your system, so you can continue viewing and reporting while your print jobs are running. You can also export files in standard file formats (BMP and TIFF). This is useful for including high quality digital images in slide shows, teaching presentations or reports, for example.
You can select single and multiple studies for printing or file export. You can also print single or multiple series from within a study or from different studies. The smallest entity you can select for printing from the Data Selector is one series. If you want to compose customized print jobs, you should use the virtual film sheet in the Viewing Section..
When you want to print whole series and studies, you can simply select these in your local view in the Data Selector and use the Print tooltab (with the printer icon) to start, monitor and control the printing process. The Destinations list shows you all the printers you can print to as well as options for exporting images as files. The indicators show you whether any print jobs are still to be performed (pending), whether a print job is currently underway and whether there have been any errors while printing. The graphic in the Layout section shows you the layout that will be used to print your images. Click the Select... button to choose a different one. You can also specify whether to print in portrait or landscape and the size of the sheets that will be used for printing. At the bottom of the Print tooltab, you can assign a priority to your print job, view your print queue and log and finally print your selected studies and series.
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In the Data Selector, select the studies and/or series you want to print. Click the Print tab (with the printer tooltab. icon) to reveal the Print
Click the printer you want to print to in the Destinations section. Click Select, then on the layout you want to print in (if necessary). Next click OK. Change the size of your paper or film and orientation (if necessary) Set a priority (if you wish). Click Print. Change any additional print options in the Print Study to... dialog box.
The Print Study dialog box, which appears after you have clicked Print on the Print tooltab, lets you see what you are about to print and includes some additional print options. The Study Identification and Print Parameters sections give key information about what is to be printed. The Print Options section gives you additional control over the appearance of your printouts. The Annotation Level radio buttons let you set the amount of annotation that will be printed on the images in much the same way as the annotation settings in the Viewing Section. The Image Annotations check box allows you to decide whether any annotation created by yourself (or others) is to be printed with the images. You can set separately the amount of annotation to be shown with the first image (Full perhaps) and subsequent images (Basic for example). The Header check box lets you insert a header at the top of each printed page in the study. This only works with Windows printers.
Configured Windows printers always refer to the default Windows printer already installed on your PC. If you have multiple Windows printers installed you can print to the correct printer using the Setup... button
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252 chapter 9 If you have only selected one study or series to print or export, you will only see OK and Cancel buttons. If you have selected a number of studies or series (and hence have a number of print jobs to submit), you will see a number of additional buttons. When you click OK in the Print Study to dialog box, the job will be printed and, if you have selected multiple studies to print, your next job will be displayed. Click OK All if you do not want to alter the print settings for each one of your multiple studies individually. Clicking this button will start all the print jobs for your studies. Click Cancel to cancel the individual job or Cancel All to cancel all the jobs you were preparing to print. The Setup button (only visible if you are printing to a Windows printer) displays the usual Windows setup dialog box for the printer.
If you almost always print studies in the same way and do not want to go through the Print Study to... dialog box each time, check the Only show dialog when Shift key is down check box. When you click Print on the Print tooltab, your studies will print immediately. If you want to change your settings, hold down the Shift key as you click on the Print button. The Print Study to... dialog box will then appear.
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The Print Queue dialog box gives you information on the job that is currently active and those that are waiting to be sent out. The buttons on the right of the Print Queue dialog box let you suspend (postpone), resubmit (resume) or delete your jobs. You can also change the priority of a job, or view more details on a job. To suspend, resubmit, delete or change the priority of a job in your print queue first select the job or jobs in the list by clicking in the first (Destination) column (hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple jobs, or the Shift key to select a range of jobs). Then click Suspend, Resubmit, Delete, Increase Priority or Decrease Priority. To find out more about a job, click Details (or double-click on a print job). A window will show more detailed information on the selected job.
You cannot delete a job currently printing. You can only use priorities to manage your own print queue. If you are connected to a network printer, the printer server on the network will generally decide what gets printed when. With DICOM printers it is possible to set priorities for systems which submit jobs to them (a system in an emergency room may be assigned a higher priority for example). Contact your system administrator or RA 600 distributor for more information.
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You may wish to find out which printers you are able to print to, or you might perhaps experience difficulty printing to a particular printer. From RA 600, you can quickly see which DICOM printers are available and what their current status is. To show the status of all your DICOM printers select Print Status... from the Data Selector menu bar. DICOM Printer
You will see a progress bar as RA 600 connects to all the printers attached to your system. When it has finished, you will see a list of all the printers along with their status and other relevant information.
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You can also select Print Log on the Data Selector menu bar to view your print log.
Your Print Log will appear. This will show you all the studies or series you have printed along with various details about them and the printing process. You can scroll and resize the columns to view more information.
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256 chapter 9 2 Select the entries you want to export (click in the first column of the entry you want to save hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple entries, or the Shift key to select a range of entries). Click Export. In the Export dialog box, enter the name of the file you want to export to in the To File field (or click the Browse... button to locate a file). If required, change the separator to be used between field entries in the exported file. If required, change the list of items of information to be exported (shown in the Exported list). Select items in the Available Fields list and use the Add >> and << Remove buttons to add or remove selected items to and from the Exported list. (You will not usually need to do this RA 600 automatically remembers what settings were used the last time your print log was exported.) Click Export.
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The double-click action to pin images to a viewport is temporarily disabled to allow you to select images to add to your virtual film sheet with a double-click.
Double-click on the viewport. The image will be added to the virtual film sheet in the Compose Print Job dialog box. Repeat steps 3 and 4, creating more film sheets if required, until you have included all the images you want to send to your virtual film sheet(s). Click the Submit button. Change any options in the Print Study to dialog box (see Printing series and studies with the Data Selector on page 250 for details) and click OK.
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You can include collapsed multi-frame images in your virtual film sheet, although only the currently shown frame will be displayed and printed.
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Once you finished composing your virtual film sheet(s), use the Job section to change (if you wish) the printer you want to use, the print orientation and film or paper size. Then click Submit to submit the print job.
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RA 600 has a layout pool which contains a wide range of pre-defined layouts for printing images. These layouts can be selected when defining a new printer (destination). This means that specific layout options can be provided for each particular printer. If you want to print using a special layout not included in the layout pool, you should first add this to the layout pool and then make this layout available for the particular printer or printers. To add or change a layout, see the RA 600 Installation and Configuration Guide.
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Single Media Archive .............................................262 Setting up RA 600 to copy data to your media.......262 Copying data to a single archive medium ..............266 Viewing images with the RA 600 CD Viewer..........268 Setting up RA 600 for viewing from your media.....269 Displaying data from your media in RA 600...........269 Indexing studies .....................................................270 Managing your media with the Index Tool..............271 Querying for volumes and studies..........................273
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You need administrator rights to configure your system for single media archiving. If you do not have these rights, you must contact your system administrator for assistance.
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263 7 Check the Copy files check box if you want to copy additional items to your read-only medium; e.g., the RA 600 CD Viewer. Then enter the path from where you want to copy those items (or use the Browse button). Note that you copy the contents of entire folders, not individual files. In the Image directory field, type in the path and directory where you want your images to be temporarily stored before they are burned onto your CD or DVD (or use the Browse button). Check the Verify burned contents check box if you want a message stating that your data has been has been copied to the CD or DVD. Enable the Show write options dialog check box if you want to more specifically steer the functionality that burns content to disk. This is used in the event that you encounter problems burning a CD or DVD. Check the Delete marked studies after archiving check box if you want the study deleted after it has been copied, and then click OK. Note that this function will only be performed after data from the local database is archived, not with archiving data you selected. Check the Enable Archive Index Tool check box if you want to enable the Index Tool for managing your media; e.g., to delete volumes from the index or mark them as missing or lent out. Check the Automatically add volumes to Archive Index Tool check box if you want RA 600 to automatically register data in the Archive Index Tool. (For this work, the Direct View option must have be configured on your system. Assuming you have administrator rights, navigate to Configuration Viewing from the Data Selector menu bar, click on the Machine tab of the Viewing Properties dialog box and check the Direct View check box.)
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Application profiles provide precise control over the kind of data you can and cannot burn to a medium. RA 600 supports a number of application profiles as defined in the DICOM standard. Consult your system administrator if you do not see the profile you require or do not have the know edge or system rights to configure application profiles.
Application profile
Basic XA 1K-XA Exchange CD Archive CD US Image Display (SF) US Image Display (MF) US Spatial Calibration (SF)
Select Configuration Single Media Archive from the Data Selector menu bar. In the Configure Single Media Archiving dialog box, select Read-Writable from the Media Type drop-down list. In the Device field, enter the drive of the device and the path to which you are copying data (or click the Browse button to navigate to the path). In the Total Size field, enter the storage limit of the medium you are using. Use the Block Size field to define the size of the blocks you want for your read-write medium. The recommended setting is 4. Specify the Prefix you want displayed. The prefix you specify here will be displayed on the media label that the Archiving Index Tool uses to identify media.
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265 6 Check the Copy files check box if you want to copy additional items to your read-only medium; e.g., the RA 600 CD Viewer. Then enter the path from where you want to copy those items (or use the Browse button). Note that you copy the contents of entire folders, not individual files. Select the Write speed you require. Check the Delete marked studies after archiving check box if you want the study deleted after it has been copied. Check the Enable Archive Index Tool check box if you want to enable the Index Tool for managing your media; e.g., to delete volumes from the index or mark them as missing or lent out. Check the Automatically add volumes to Archive Index Tool check box if you want RA 600 to automatically register data in the Archive Index Tool. (For this work, the Direct View option must have be configured on your system. Assuming you have administrator rights, navigate to Configuration Viewing from the Data Selector menu bar, click on the Machine tab of the Viewing Properties dialog box and check the Direct View check box.) Check the relevant Application Profiles: Explanation of profile
Burns single frame or multi-frame XA images up to 512 x 512 x 8 bits. Burns single frame or multi-frame X-ray images up to 1024 x 1024 x 12 bits. The profile also supports the burning of secondary capture images. A combination of Basic XA and US Image Display (MF). A combination of 1K=XA and US Image Display (MF). Burns single frame ultrasound images to disk. Burns both single frame and multi-frame ultrasound images to disk. Burns single frame ultrasound images with spatial calibration for quantitative purposes. You can also use it to capture single frame ultrasound images without spatial calibration data. Burns multi-frame ultrasound images with spatial calibration data for quantitative purposes. Burns CT, MR and secondary capture images.
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Application profiles provide precise control over the kind of data you can and cannot burn to a medium. RA 600 supports a number of application profiles as defined in the DICOM standard. Consult your system administrator if you do not see the profile you require or do not have the know edge or system rights to configure application profiles.
Application profile
Basic XA 1K-XA Exchange CD Archive CD US Image Display (SF) US Image Display (MF) US Spatial Calibration (SF)
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General Uncompressed Compressed Burns Composite SOP Instances, such as images, structured reports, presentation states and waveforms (in uncompressed form). Burns uncompressed images to disk. Burns compressed images to disk.
To export data to a single medium archive later on 1 2 On the Data Selector tooltab, select from the Worklist View dropdown list worklist from which you want to export studies. In the Data Selector, select the studies you want to archive and then click the Archiving tooltab ( ).
267 3 Select Archiving Select for archiving on the menu bar. Your studies have now been marked for archiving. If at any time you decide not to archive a study, select the study and go to Archiving Unselect for archiving. You can add the Archive DICOM tag (3109, 102C) to the Data Selector to see which studies have been marked for archiving. Click the click the Create Volume button in the Local Database section of the Archiving tooltab. From the Write Media dialog box, select the appropriate Application Profile and click OK. A progress bar will report the stages of the export as RA 600 copies your data. If you are copying more data than a medium will hold, you must insert a new medium when RA 600 prompts you. When the job has finished, view the results with the CD Viewer (see Viewing images with the RA 600 CD Viewer on page 268 for details).
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The Viewer will not display compressed images. Before exporting images to disk, you can see whether an image has been compressed by adding the Derivation Description tag (0008, 2111) to the Data Selector at instance (image) level. Adding this tag at this level will also show the quality factor with which an image has been compressed.
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In the Add View dialog, specify the Description field by typing in a description for your new study list. Select from the List drop-down list the worklist you created to view your single media archiving images. Use the Copy settings from drop-down list to indicate the list whose settings should apply to the one you want to create. Click OK and view the worklist by selecting it from the Worklist View drop-down list on the Data Selector tab. View the study by double-clicking it (make sure your disk in the proper drive first). If you want to import the study first, select it, right-click it and then left-click on Import from the pop-up menu.
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Indexing studies
Making sure your archive is properly indexed is vital. If it is not, your studies will be very difficult to find again. Indexing can be performed automatically by RA 600 during the archiving process when new volumes are created. If, however, you prefer to index them afterwards you can also register them yourself. To register media in the archive index 1 2 3 Insert the media you want to register in your drive. Click on the Add Volume button on the Archiving tooltab ( ) in the Data Selector. Navigate to the drive containing the disk and click OK. If you see a Browse for Folder dialog box, navigate to the drive containing the media you want to register and click on it to select it. (If you dont see this box, just proceed to step 5). In the Add Volume dialog box, enter a Name for the volume (be consistent!), specify its Storage Place and add a Note and a short Description of the volume if you wish. (The other fields are predetermined by RA 600 and cannot be changed). Click OK.
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The fact that the volume has been lent out, the name and ID of the borrower and the date it was lent are all shown in the list on the Volumes tab of the Archive Index Tool. At some point the volume will probably be returned and you will need to register this fact. To mark a volume as returned 1 2 3 Click on the Show Volumes button on the Archiving tooltab ( ) in the Data Selector. On the Volumes tab of the Archive Index Tool, select the volume that was lent out. Click the Return button and confirm your action by clicking OK.
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272 chapter 10 If a volume is lost Rather than be returned, a volume may end up as lost and will effectively no longer be available to the archive. You should also register this with the Index Tool. To mark a volume as lost 1 2 Click on the Show Volumes button on the Archiving tooltab ( ) in the Data Selector. On the Volumes tab of the Archive Index Tool, click on the Query button to perform an empty query (if necessary) to show all the available volumes. You can also perform a specific query to narrow your search for the volume that is to be lent out. Select the volume that is lost and click the Volume Sheet button. Select Lost from the State drop-down list.
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If a lost volume is subsequently found, repeat this procedure but select Present on the State drop-down list.
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Querying for studies is very similar: Click on the Show Volumes button, select the Studies tab and click the Query button. In both cases, you can use wildcards. If you enter N* in the Name or Patient Name field, for example, RA 600 will retrieve an entry that begins with N. All query parameters act as "and/and" conditions and are not case-sensitive.
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Quality control
An RA 600 system can become a complete quality control workstation, acting as a gatekeeper to ensure that studies and series made available for permanent storage and to other systems on a hospital network are correct and include the right demographics. This chapter explains how to open studies for quality control, edit demographics, modify the images in a study, and automatically send them to other systems when you have finished working on them.
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The Quality Control tooltab in the Data Selector....277 Starting quality control............................................278 The Quality Control screen ....................................279 Editing patient demographics.................................281 Matching studies automatically ..............................282 Adding, rearranging and removing data.................283 Splitting and joining series and studies ..................286 Windowing, annotating, flipping and rotating .........289 Saving studies and changing study status .............290 Automatically sending studies after saving them ...291 Setting which demographics can be edited............292
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The quality control features of RA 600 permit the user to modify image, patient and DICOM data. Due to the potential risk involved in this, quality control demands strict procedures or protocols. GEMS IT nor its distributors will accept any liability whatsoever for the consequences of the modification of data using the quality control software.
A 600 includes many special features intended to allow various quality control tasks to be undertaken at designated workstations (Quality Control Workstations) within a hospital. These workstations are generally located between an acquisition device (such as a CT scanner) and the hospitals network. They perform a gatekeeper function by ensuring that acquired images and studies are correct and have the right patient information associated with them before they are made available at other locations on the network. With RA 600 you can add or change patient demographics before studies are saved and stored or routed to other clinical workstations for viewing and reporting. Previous studies can be (pre-)fetched from the hospitals archive and used, for example, to adjust the window width and level settings or orientation of a CR image to comply with previously acquired CR studies. You can also re-order images within a series, or remove images that have no clinical relevance. To speed the process and minimize the possibility of manual error, RA 600 automates quality control activities as much as possible. You can, for example, add all the demographic information on a patient to a newly acquired study by copying the information from a worklist entry for that patient. Then you need only change details specific to the new study, so minimizing the risk of typing error.
If your hospital information system is capable of generating a DICOM 3.0 modality worklist, some of the quality control work can be automated. For example, the patient demographic information that is part of a worklist entry can be automatically inserted in a study.
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You can also view the status of studies by right-clicking in your patient or study view and selecting Quality Control Status History from the pop-up menu.
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If you select a whole study to open for quality control which contains more than one series, RA 600 will open all the series contained in the study.
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When you open a study to work on, the Quality Control screen will open. It is where you will spend most of your time when performing quality control procedures. With its familiar Pictorial Index and tooltabs, it looks in many ways similar to the Viewing Section screen. Since, however, the quality control screen is not intended for advanced viewing and diagnostics, it does not offer all the tooltabs available in the Viewing Section. While you will have full windowing capabilities using the Windowing tooltab (see Windowing images on page 96), as well as complete zoom and flip/rotate capabilities and measurement and annotation, you will not be able to perform MPR/MIP, apply image enhancement filters, or create cines. In the Quality Control section you will, however, have two additional tooltabs - the Quality Control tooltab (which has this icon and is somewhat more sophisticated than the one in the Data Selector), and the Split/Join tooltab (with this icon). The Quality Control tooltab on the Quality Control screen lets you add and change demographics, insert patient and study demographic information from a worklist and, as in the Data Selector, view the status history of the currently loaded study. It also lets you insert and delete images and series and change the patient orientation annotation shown on the images (see Adding, rearranging and removing data on page 283). The Split/Join tooltab lets you create multiple series and studies out of a single series or study and combine images from different series or studies into a single series or study (see Splitting and joining series and studies on page 286). In addition, you may see two other windows on the Quality Control screen (depending on whether the appropriate check boxes on the Quality Control tooltab are checked). One is your Local Data window, which essentially lets you view all or part of the studies in your local database as in the Data Selector. The other window is the Worklist window which will contain an acquisition (modality) worklist if one is available. You use this list to select entries you want to copy the demographics information from when you are working on a study. You can select queries from the drop-down lists at the foot of the Quality Control tooltab to view particular types of studies in these windows.
The matching worklist shown must be specified in the Quality Control configuration. This will always be a (DICOM) modality worklist.
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280 chapter 11 Below the tooltabs you have the Scope which operates in the same way as in the Viewing Section and, below this, three large buttons. The Save button allows you to save a study (or the changes to it) without having to return to the Data Selector. The Reset button undoes all your unsaved changes and the study will revert back to how it was when you opened it. The Back button returns you to the Data Selector (giving you the option of saving the study first).
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A powerful feature of RA 600 is its ability to match patient demographics for a new study with that of a previous study on the same patient, so that the information can be automatically entered by RA 600 for the new study. This can save a considerable amount of time and greatly reduce the risk of human error. To match a study with a worklist while performing quality control click the Automatic button on the Quality Control tooltab in the Quality Control screen. An indicator light will show that matching is in progress. You can also see the results of your previous matching actions. To view a log of previous matching attempts click the Log button on the Quality Control tooltab in the Quality Control screen. In the Match Log you can also click in the first (Patient Name) column and then on Open to view more details on that particular entry. You can also set up RA 600 so that all incoming studies are matched automatically.
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You can combine other images and series with the study you are currently working on. To combine a different series with a study open the study in the Quality Control screen. In your local studies list window, navigate to the study containing the series you want to combine with your study and select it. On the Quality Control tooltab (with the icon), click Series in the Insert as section.
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284 chapter 11 The series within the study you selected will be added as series within the study you are working on. Rather than add series to the study you are working on as separate series in the study, you can append the series as images to the end of a series within the study you are working on. To add a series as images to a study click on the series in the Pictorial Index you want to add the images to. In your local studies list window, navigate to and select the series whose images you want to add to the series you selected in the Pictorial Index. Click the Images button in the Insert as section of the Quality Control tooltab.
You can only append images of the same type to a series. And, if you select a study (rather than a series) in the local studies list window before attempting to append the images to a series, RA 600 will not do this if there is more than one series in the study you have selected.
Renumbering images
When you change the order of, add to or delete images in a series, you can have the images keep their original numbers or have RA 600 renumber them so they run consecutively again. You need administrator access to change this setting, see the Installation and Configuration Guide for details.
Since CT and MR studies already contain predefined orientation information, you cannot change the orientation annotation of their images. (In general, you cannot change the orientation information of images that have valid image orientation vectors).
285 For example, if the main axis from left to right across the images is from H(ead) to F(eet), the other axis can only be PA or LR. If the second axis is then determined as PA, then the secondary orientation must be LR.
You cannot use double characters such as LL, RR etc. LF is not the same as FL. In the first case, L is the main orientation and F the secondary, while in the second case the reverse is true.
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The image will become grey (just one image in this case). To select multiple images hold down the Ctrl key and click on the images you want to include in your selection. A grey film will cover all the images to indicate they are included in your selection. To select a range of images hold down the Shift key, click on the first image in the range and then on the last image in the range. To add a range of images to your selection hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys, click on the first image in the range and then on the last image in the range. To remove an image from your selection the Ctrl key. click on the image while holding down
287 To place images in a new study select the images you want to move to the new series and click Study in the Split to section on the Split/Join tooltab. (You can also right-click in the Pictorial Index and select Split to Study, or select Manipulate Split to Study from the menu bar).
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While in the Quality Control screen, you can window images, add annotation, flip and rotate images. You do this using the tooltabs in just the same way as when in the Viewing Section. You can also have RA 600 automatically save your windowing settings when you return to the Data Selector. You need administrator access to change this setting, see the Installation and Configuration Guide for details.
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293 8 If you have specified a drop-down list in the Type field in 5, enter the various options which should appear in this drop-down list in the Selection list field. Place each option on a new line.
To remove demographics information that can be edited 1 Select Configuration Quality Control... from the Data Selector menu bar. Then click the Edit Demographics tab of the Quality Control Module Properties dialog box. Select a modality and level from the drop-down lists in the Select section of the Edit Demographics tab. Select the information by clicking on it in the window in the Controls section to select it and then click the Delete button.
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Selecting modalities If you select the Generic modality in the Modality drop-down list, the settings will apply to studies from all modalities. If a DICOM element is specified at both the Generic level and for a specific modality, the latter will be used. The Generic level is the only level at which Patient and Study parameters can be set. You should never delete this level. About levels The options to change demographics will only appear when the same level is being viewed in the Edit Demographics dialog box when working on studies in the Quality Control screen. About field types You can select various types of data fields in the Type drop-down list. If you select Edit Box, this will allow normal text strings to be entered on a single line. The Multi-Line Edit Box will let text be entered on a number of lines. The Date Box means that a date must be entered in a particular format. This format is determined by the users Windows settings. RA 600 will only allow the information to be entered in the correct format. If an incorrect format is used, RA 600 will inform the user of this and indicate the format which should be used. Selecting Time Box will mean that the information must be entered in the time format as specified in the Windows settings. Again, RA 600 will only allow time entries with this format and will indicate the correct format if an incorrect one is used. There is also a Patient Name Box in the Type drop-down list. This creates the five fields required to fully specify a persons name in DICOM. Finally, you can select a drop-down list (Drop List Box). You then type the entries to go in this list in the Selection list field.
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Customizing RA 600
This chapter shows how you can customize RA 600. It tells you how to display, hide and re-size screen elements, create personal toolbars and keyboard shortcuts and use special commands for changing statuses. Because RA 600 lets you create your own tooltabs, menus and right mouse button menus, you can take customization further than is the case with many other software products. Such features not only provide additional convenience, but permit very tight integration with other systems, such as a HIS or RIS. The end of the chapter provides a list of items to help you work more efficiently with RA 600.
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Making changes while using RA 600 .....................296 Configuring your toolbars .......................................297 Creating keyboard shortcuts ..................................299 Using special commands for changing study status300 Configuring right mouse button (pop-up) menus....302 Custom tooltabs, menus and right mouse button menus ....................................................................303 Customizing your fonts in RA 600..........................304 Working quickly with RA 600..................................306
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ach user of RA 600 will have their own specific needs and ways of working. RA 600 is designed to be highly configurable (even on the fly in many ways) so you can have it look, and use it, just the way you want.
When you start RA 600, it will look to see who has logged on and use your own special settings. This means that you, and any other users of the system, can create their own favorite settings without worrying about inconveniencing anyone else.
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You change the appearance of your toolbars by selecting Tools Customize from the menu bar of whatever part of RA 600 you are in. The Toolbars tab of the Customize dialog box lets you select which toolbars you want available and whether the Tool tips (the pop-up descriptions of the buttons) are shown when you pause with the mouse pointer over a button. You can also choose between Cool Look (flat) buttons or (more traditional) 3Dstyle buttons, and have larger buttons (useful for high resolution monitors).
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298 chapter 12 To remove (delete) a toolbar you have created select Tools Customize from the menu bar. On the Tool bars tab of the Customize dialog box, click on the name of the toolbar you want to remove. Click Delete.
If when trying to remove a toolbar, you see a Reset button rather than a Delete button, you have selected one of the standard toolbars installed with RA 600. While you cannot Delete these, you can undo any changes that have been made to them using the Reset button. While they cannot be deleted entirely, you can of course hide them from view by unchecking the check box next the name of the toolbar.
You do not have to open the Customize dialog box to be able to move buttons around. Press the Alt key as you drag the buttons. This has the same effect as opening the Customize dialog box. You can also quickly open the Customize dialog box by rightclicking on any toolbar and clicking Customize.
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Keyboard shortcuts, which let you perform tasks by pressing a simple key combination, can be much faster than using a mouse. Accelerator keys (key combinations which include sequences of keys) can also be useful to know and might even become essential if for some reason it is not possible to use a mouse. RA 600 comes with many shortcuts and accelerator keys already included for numerous tasks, but it also lets you define shortcuts for just about anything you might want to do. To create a keyboard shortcut select Tools Customize from the menu bar and click the Shortcut Keys tab of the Customize dialog box. Look through the commands in the list on the left of the dialog box. When you find a command you want to create a shortcut for, click on it and click Create Shortcut. Then press the key you want to use for the shortcut. The key combination will appear in the Shortcut key column. Exporting shortcut lists To help you more easily remember the shortcuts you have created, you can export them to a text file so they can be printed out, for example. To export the shortcut list select Tools Customize from the menu bar and click the Shortcut Keys tab of the Customize dialog box. Click on the Export button and select a location to save the list in the Save as dialog box. Click Save. To remove a keyboard shortcut select Tools Customize from the menu bar and click the Shortcut Keys tab of the Customize dialog box. Click on the command whose keyboard shortcut you want to remove. Then click Remove. The Reset All button removes all the keyboard shortcuts that have previously been assigned.
Shortcuts you assign will override any previous shortcut with the same key combination. This means you should be sure not to use any other combinations you might need, such as the Ctrl X, Ctrl C and Ctrl V for Windows Cut, Copy and Paste.
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When you are in the Viewing Section and wish to close a study, change its status (to Reported for example) and then open another study for viewing, you can do this with single key combinations. These are called special commands, and they can help save time and effort when you have a number of studies to work through. To create a special command 1 In the Viewing Section, select Tools Customize from the menu bar and click the Special Commands tab of the Customize dialog box. Click the Add button and then enter a descriptive name for the special command in the Add/Modify Special Commands dialog box. Check the check boxes next to the study statuses the special command is to be able to change. (Specify here the original study statuses before the special command is used). You may, for example, not want the special command to change the status of a study from Authorized to something else. In this case, do not check the Authorized check box. Select a final study status from the drop-down list. This is the status that the special command will set the study to when you apply the command. Select <Do not change> if you do not want RA 600 to change the status of the study. Click the Previous Item, Next Item or Back radio button if necessary. If the Previous Item radio button is active, RA 600 will show the study immediately before the one you are looking at in your list. Selecting the Next Item radio button will mean that the next study in your list is shown. If the Back radio button is selected you will be returned to the Data Selector. Check the Save added/changed data check box if you want RA 600 to automatically save your changes when you use the shortcut. Click the Create Shortcut button. When the Assign Shortcut dialog box appears, simply press the key combination you want to use for the special command (hold down the Ctrl key and press one of the letter keys for example).
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You can only create special commands which work in the Viewing Section. The Special Commands tab will therefore only appear on the Customize dialog box if you open this dialog box in the Viewing Section. Since special commands involve changing the status of studies, you will also only be able to create them if you have permission as a user to assign statuses to studies. If you do not have this permission you will also not see the Special Commands tab on the Customize dialog box. You can display the Special Commands tab (if you have the appropriate permissions) by choosing Configuration Viewing... from the Data Selector menu bar. On the Study Status Permissions tab, check any of the check boxes.
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301 To modify or delete a special command 1 In the Viewing Section, select Tools Customize from the menu bar and click the Special Commands tab of the Customize dialog box. Click on the name of the special command you want to modify or delete in the list and click the Modify or Delete button. If modifying a special command, follow steps 3 to 7 in the To create a special command procedure described above.
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Right mouse button menus, which pop-up by right-clicking with the mouse, offer a quick way to use RA 600. There are, however, a great many commands that can appear on them. To avoid them becoming longer than you might like, you can readily specify which items should appear on your right mouse button menus. You can then include commands you use frequently and leave off those commands which you seldom if ever use. You can specify separately what items appear in the right mouse button menus in the Viewing Section and in the Data Selector. To add or remove items from the Data Selector right mouse button menu select Configuration User... from the Data Selector menu bar and check or uncheck the check boxes on the Popup Menu tab of the User Properties dialog box. To add or remove items from the Viewing Section right mouse button menus select Configuration Viewing... from the Data Selector menu bar and check or uncheck the check boxes on the Popup Menu tab of the Viewing Properties dialog box.
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While most Windows programs allow some degree of customization to the users preferences, RA 600 takes this a great deal further by allowing new, fully customized tooltabs, menus and right mouse button menus to be created. When you have your own tooltabs, these will contain sets of buttons that perform particular actions. You have a great deal of choice about what you include on these, but generally the items fall into three categories: applications, web page access and HIS/RIS functions. Any application you can run separately on your system under Windows can be started by clicking a custom button you create. You could, for example, have Microsoft Word or Excel start (perhaps with a particular template document) or have the Windows calculator just a mouse-click away. If you have access to the Internet or an intranet, you can include buttons that will launch a web browser showing a particular HTML page. This could, of course, be especially useful for browser-based HIS/RIS systems. Particularly powerful for workstations connected to HIS/RIS systems is the ability to include commonly-used HIS/RIS functions on tooltabs and menus. So, for example, you could have a Look Up Patient button which, when clicked, will query a HIS for certain details about the selected patient. Further discussion of custom tooltabs and menus is beyond the scope of this guide. If you already have them, or would like them set up on your system, contact your system administrator or RA 600 distributor for further information.
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Fonts in your Data Selector patient and study lists (worklist views)
The appearance of your patient and study lists in the Data Selector is highly configurable. You can specify different fonts for different levels (such as patient, study, series etc.) and even highlight rows which contain specific information of interest (such as the status New for example). To change the fonts used for worklist views 1 In the Data Selector, select the worklist view you want to change the fonts of from the drop-down list at the top of the Data Selector tooltab. Select Database bar. View Properties... from the Data Selector menu
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In the Fonts section of the Configure View dialog box, click on Study item to which you want to apply a font and then on the Font button. Select the font to be used for lines in the worklist view displaying information on studies and click OK. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for Series item, Image item and, if you are configuring a patient view, Patient item.
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In this way, you will be able to have RA 600 display information at each level (patient, study, series and image) differently. You might, for example, want to have information on images shown in a somewhat smaller size.
305 Configuring your worklist views to look the same You can readily configure each of your worklist views in this way. If, however, you have a number of worklist views which you want to look the same, you can simply configure one of them and then click the Make default check box in the Fonts section of the Configure View dialog box. All your other worklist views will be configured in the same way as this default worklist view.
In the Viewing Properties dialog box, click on the Image Annotations tab. In the Font section, specify a minimum and maximum font size and set a relative size if desired.
Minimum, Maximum and relative font sizes RA 600 does not always display fonts at the same size in the viewports, but resizes them according to the size of the viewport. If the viewport is large, RA 600 will use a relatively large font, but if you have a large number of small viewports, RA 600 will use a small font. The maximum and minimum values in the Viewing Properties dialog box allow you to specify the largest and smallest fonts that RA 600 should use. If the fonts generally appear too large or small, you can also set a Relative Size other than 1. This will scale all the fonts displayed either up or down.
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The double-click
You will probably be aware that double-clicking on a study or series in your study or patient list will open it for viewing. But there are also other many other occasions when a double-click can save you time. Double-click on a study in your study view in the Data Selector to open all the series in the study for viewing. on the patient in a patient view to open all the studies on that patient inside a viewport to pin or unpin that viewport. inside a viewport while creating a virtual film sheet to add the image to that film sheet. inside a viewport while sending images (from within the viewing section) in order to add an image to the teleradiology send job. on a print job in the Print Queue to reveal details on it. on the first (Origin) column of the Receive Log in teleradiology to view details on what you received. on the first (Destination) column of the Send Log in teleradiology to view details on what you sent.
307 on patient name in Quality Control to view details on a study. on first (Name) column of the Destinations dialog box to modify its properties. on a marker or text to edit the text. on an ROI to close it.
If you hold down the Ctrl key while right-clicking in a viewport, you will mark the image in that viewport as a key note (see Viewing key notes on page 109 for details). Repeating this process will unmark the image. Holding down the Shift key while right-clicking in a viewport displays a single viewport containing the image you clicked on. Very useful for quickly zooming in to view an image more closely. Repeat the process to zoom out again.
Right-clicking in certain parts of the screen brings up a menu which allows you to do just about everything possible using the tooltabs, and even includes one or two additional functions. The right mouse button menu is context sensitive the items which appear on this menu depend on the part of RA 600 you are currently working in, and where you click on the screen. As you gain experience with RA 600, you will find that you can work more quickly by just using these right mouse button menus. In fact, you might possibly wish to hide the tooltabs to give yourself more viewing area. The items which may appear on the right mouse button menu should be quite familiar once you are familiar with RA 600 so will not be listed here. We recommend that you look to see what the right mouse button menus offer and become familiar with what is included on them in the various parts of RA 600. They really can help speed up your work.
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Appendices
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s a radiologist or physician, there will probably be various tasks you will perform regularly with RA 600. This RA 600 appendix includes step-by-step instructions for a number of these. You can work through them as exercises when familiarizing yourself with RA 600 or, if you already have some experience of using it, you might want to see if the procedures here offer better ways of utilizing RA 600 for these tasks.
You are requested to view the chest film of Sophie Temple (Patient ID PO113, a sample study installed with RA 600). 1 First filter for the patient name and/or ID and/or modality. Click the Patient name column header in the study list to sort patient names alphabetically and locate Temple, Sophie or In the Modality section of the Data Selector tooltab (with the icon), click None then check the CR check box. Only CR studies will appear in the study list. 2 Click the + next to the study icon to show all the series in the Sophie Temple study. This contains two series. Open one of the series for viewing by double-clicking on it. Once in the Viewing Section, look in the drop-down list on the Windowing tooltab (with the sun icon) to see whether there is a default established for the images. If there is, select it to set a pre-defined windowing level.
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312 appendix A 4 If not, and you want to make further adjustments, click with the right mouse button in the viewport and, holding the button down, drag up, down, right or left (or some combination of these) to adjust width and center. Click the Filtering tooltab (with the icon) and apply various filters by clicking on the appropriate button. Try the magnifying glass on the Zooming tooltab. Click the right mouse button and select a zoom level from the pop-up menu to check details made visible by your filtering. You now want to hide the Pictorial Index. On the Layout tooltab (with the Swiss Army knife icon), uncheck the Show Pictorial Index check box (you can also select Layout Show Pictorial Index from the menu bar to show and hide the Pictorial Index). Access any other tools on the tooltabs or via the right mouse button pop-up menu you think you might need to aid diagnosis. You are now ready to send a report.
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Sending a report
Based on the protocols established in your unit, you might dictate your report or use the reporting functions in RA 600. 1 2 3 4 To turn on the report function, check the Show Reports check box on the Layout tooltab (with the Swiss Army knife icon). Type your report in the window which appears under the viewport. Click the Back button in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. In the Save Data dialog box, make sure the Reports check box is checked (click on the Advanced button if you do not see the check box). Change the Study status to Reported by selecting this status from the Update Study Status drop-down list and click Yes. The report will now be saved with the study. You will now be back in the Data Selector. Click on the tab with the telephone icon to bring the Teleradiology tooltab to the front. Select a destination in the Destinations section and then on the Send button. A Send to... dialog box appears. Set your transmission parameters as necessary. Format must be completed. If the Delete After Send check box is checked, the entire study will be deleted from your system even if you are only sending one series from a study containing a number of series. If you check the check box Structured Reports only, RA 600 will send only the structured report, not the images. Click OK to immediately start transmission. Unless procedures have been established otherwise, most cases are not send immediately. The times at which transmissions are made are typically set by the system administrator for maximum efficiency.
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The protocols established in your unit may have you input your name, the referring physicians name, date, etc. in the Send to dialog box.
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In the Data Selector, click the tab with the Selector tooltab to the front.
In the Modality section, click None. Then check the MR and DR check boxes. You have now filtered the local database (study list) for MRs and DRs. Click Patient name at the top of the column in the study list to sort patient names alphabetically. If you still cannot see the Baxter, Laura studies, click the Query... button in the View section of the Data Selector tooltab. In the Patient name field of the Query Parameters dialog box, type B*. You will now see a list of all MRs for patients whose names start with B (see Pinpointing your data with queries on page 58 for details on querying). Click the study icons for the two Baxter, Laura entries in the study list to see the underlying series. Holding down the Ctrl key, click each series in turn to select both of them. Click the tab with the icon to bring the Filing tooltab to the front. Click New in the Folders section. In the New Folder dialog box, make a folder with the referring physicians name and move the studies to this folder (select File Move to Folder from the menu bar and then select the new folder you have just made). Bring the Viewing tooltab ( ) to the front. Select a multi-study option (the thicker lines indicate divisions between studies). Confirm the choice to select multiple studies in the View Studies message box by clicking Yes and then OK in the Viewing message box. After the studies have opened in the Viewing Section, window as necessary (see Windowing on page 35 for details). You decide you would like cine loops in two of the series. Click the tab with the icon to bring the Cine tooltab to the front.
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You can leave the Directory field in the New Folder dialog box empty.
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315 12 13 Turn on the cine loop for the series (see Viewing cine loops on page 37 for details). You want to hide the DICOM data on the study of an image. Click the right mouse button in the viewport and select Annotation None (or select Image Annotation None from the menu bar). After manipulating the series as necessary, check the Show Reports check box on the Layout tooltab (with the Swiss Army knife icon). Type your report in the window which appears under the viewport. Click the Back button in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.
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In the Save Data dialog box, click Yes to save any annotations and your report with the study. Also update the Study Status if necessary. The referring physician can now access the study at his or her convenience.
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his RA 600 appendix looks at some possible situations a radiographic technologist might face and gives step-by-step instructions on how to use RA 600 to complete the tasks.
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318 appendix B 7 Hold down the Ctrl key and click each study that is required in turn. (If you need all the studies, just double click on the patient icon to select the patient.) Select File Move to folder from the menu bar.
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Select the folder you just created and click OK in the Move Data confirmation box. To verify all the studies have been correctly placed in this folder, click the None button in the Folders section on the Data Selector tooltab. Then check the check box next to the folder you created. Only those studies the doctor wishes to look at should appear in your local view. On the Viewing tooltab, select an appropriate layout for viewing by clicking on the appropriate button.
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Adjusting window level 1 Select on the Viewport scope radio button in the Viewing Section. Then click inside a viewport and right-click and hold the mouse button down until the sun icon appears. 2 3 4 Move the mouse up and down and to the left and right until the window level is how you want it. Repeat for the other view as required. If there are preferred settings for a specific modality or image, you can find these in the drop-down list near the top of the windowing tooltab.
Hiding annotations 1 Select a viewport, right click on it and select Annotation from the pop-up menu. 2
None
You can also turn annotation off using the menu bar (Image menu) or selecting the None radio button in the Annotation Level section on the Annotation and Measurement tooltab.
Finally Depending on the protocol established for creating reports, you may now need to set up dictation equipment, prepare the Reports window in RA 600 (turning off the Pictorial Index on the Viewing tooltab will provide more room for viewing and reporting), or open a word processor.
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The doctor finishes reporting on the case and asks you to send out the report. He or she should have saved their Presentation States and Key Note Objects and RA 600 should be back in the Data Selector. If the doctor has left with the Viewing Section still showing, you should check with a supervisor since the doctor may not have processed the Save Data dialog box (which is shown before returning to the Data Selector). 1 2 Verify that the appropriate study or series is selected in your local view in the Data Selector. Go to the Teleradiology tooltab (with the telephone icon) and select the destination in the Destinations section by (single) clicking on it. Click the Send button. In the Send to dialog box, confirm the Study Identification data. Unless procedures have been established otherwise, most cases are not sent immediately. Click OK.
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Confirm everything is correct in the Print Study to dialog box and click OK.
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License agreement
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Glossary
Absolute size
This is selected in the Viewing Section, images in the viewports are shown (at a zoom factor of 1) in such a way that one pixel of the image when it was acquired is represented by one pixel on the screen, hence at absolute size. See also Relative size. A displayed cutline is active when the image it represents is also being shown in another viewport. They are displayed in a different color (normally yellow). The currently selected viewport. This will be indicated by a box around it (red on color monitors). If the Scope is set to Viewport, your actions will only affect the active viewport. Extra modules for printing, acquisition, archiving, teleradiology, etc. Facility to store notes and markers with separate images or with the study. Also used to describe the imported text information that arrived with the images. External database, mainly used for long term storage.
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328 appendix E Archive buffer An intermediate storage location between the local database and the archiving medium. Typically a buffer is used when the archiving medium must (as for CD-Recordables) be written to in a single go or when the archiving process is going to take some time). Studies that are archived are first moved to the buffer and then moved to the archive medium at some later time. A tool which is part of the RA 600 Single Media Archive module that lets you manage and retrieve studies that have been archived. The automatic sending of studies by RA 600 to other systems. You set this up by creating auto transmit protocols. These are triggered by particular events (such as saving studies) and can contain rules that, for example, let you only automatically transmit studies received at certain times, or only those of a particular modality. Bitmap files in the standard Windows format. You can export images in RA 600 in this format which is very widely supported by other Windows applications. A sequential projection of images in a study to create the illusion of movement. A means of measuring angles, particularly useful for small angles and when the apex of the angle lies outside the viewport. Method of compacting data in order to use less storage space or take up less transmission time in teleradiology. The physical and software links between two devices that allow them to successfully exchange data. Intersection between two planes. RA 600 can find and display cutlines provided your study has suitable images. Part of RA 600 that manages the databases of images and studies.
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Data Selector
329 Database Delete locks Collection of studies/patients. Databases can be manipulated using the Data Selector. To guard against accidental loss of data, you can protect studies from inadvertent deletion by locking them. The delete lock must be removed before a study can be deleted. DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) is a detailed specification for formatting and exchanging images and associated information. DICOM is rapidly becoming the industry standard and is already supported by many modality, imager, PACS and workstation manufacturers. The amount of storage capacity on a hard disk. Small hardware device that is delivered with the software and that has to be connected to the parallel port of the PC while working with RA 600 (unless a license file is used). Using the mouse (with left mouse button pressed) to move or resize an object. A non-linear windowing function that modifies the pixel data so that lower values are shown in a wider range of gray tones, thus generally making images darker. It is used to compensate for inherent non-linearity in various modalities. A place for storing studies. You can create various folders so that you can keep studies of a particular type together, such as those for a particular physician for example. For each folder, you can specify if you want the studies to be stored in compressed form or not. Method of acquiring medical images from an analog or video signal using a frame grabber board. Usually used for ultrasound images or with older types of scanners.
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330 appendix E Hang criteria Criteria which determine which hanging protocol RA 600 will use if instructed to automatically select a hanging protocol to display a study. They can be time-dependent (such as Most Recent) or DICOM-dependent (such as CT Only). A pre-defined layout of viewports which can be selected and used automatically for displaying studies. Selected on the Viewing tool tab in the Data Selector or the Layout tool tab in the Viewing Section. Hospital Information System or Radiology Information System widely used in medical institutions. A single slice from a CT/MR or US study or a single, digitized film. See Archive Index Tool. See Cutlines. Changing the gray (or color) palette to contrasting levels. Option on the Windowing tool tab. A compression method used for reducing the size of digital images when transmitting them to other systems. RA 600 allows you to use various types of JPEG compression, both lossy (so that image quality is diminished) and lossless (the image quality remains the same). Overview of all teleradiology jobs (sending and receiving of studies), used at both sending and receiving sites. Images of particular interest or clinical significance which can be marked as such so that you can subsequently just view these images when examining the study. When you are viewing multiple cine loops, you can typically link these so they are synchronized to each other.
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331 Local database Locking studies Database of studies stored on the local hard disk of the RA 600 system. Studies can be locked against deletion to prevent inadvertent loss of valuable medical data. RA 600 can automatically lock incoming studies from particular origins, and automatically unlock them after they have been successfully transmitted. Studies can also be manually locked and unlocked in the Data Selector. A non-linear windowing function that modifies the pixel data so that higher values are shown in a wider range of gray tones, thus generally making images lighter. It is used to compensate for inherent non-linearity in various modalities. Compression methods used in RA 600. Lossless means that none of the information in images is lost when decompressed on the other system. Images appear exactly as they were sent. This is not the case with lossy compression some of the image detail will be lost in the compression and decompression process. Possibility of enlarging or reducing the images in the viewport. Also called zooming. A window you can place over your viewports that lets you zoom in on a particular part of an image. When you have access to a worklist, RA 600 can automatically insert worklist entry items into studies, thereby importing information from the external worklist. To do this, RA 600 must know what information is available in the external worklist and how it should use this information. Mapping lists provide this information. Their high level of configurability lets RA 600 work with all kinds of DICOM and non-DICOM worklists. When cines are linked (synchronized), one of the linked cines will be the master cine. All the other cines will synchronize with this master.
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332 appendix E Matching studies Used in Quality Control and acquisition to associate patient information to a study based on a previous study on the same patient. This saves time and helps reduce the possibility of human error. Device for medical image acquisition (scanner). Maximum Intensity Projection. A method of computing new views of subjects based on the image volume created by sequences of MR slices for example. Multi-Planar Reformatting. Another 3D image processing method to assist in viewing and diagnosis. Multi-frame images are DICOM images for which the pixel-data space has been extended to be able to contain multiple pictures called frames. All frames in an image share the same DICOM Image header (containing various nonpixel data concerning the image, its circumstances of creation and parameters for optimal viewing). There are various types of multi-frame image. For example, 2D +T multi-frames (cine runs) contain sets of 2-dimensional images, all taken on the same coordinates, with different time stamps at fixed intervals. They typically show the effect over time of some contrast agent through vessels for example. One example of these is cardiac cine runs. In 3D multi-frames (slices of a volume), sets of 2-dimensional images are created at (more or less) the same time on different layers or at different angles. These sets look much like CT or MR series, and indeed, some are MPR or MIP processed images. An example is the full body scan. There are also combinations of the above types, such as the SPECT gated study.
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333 RA 600 supports multi-frame images in many areas such as Nuclear Medicine (including Static; Dynamic; Gated; Tomo; Gated Tomo; Recon Tomo and Recon Gated Tomo), Ultrasound, X-ray Angiography (including bi-plane studies) and Radio Fluoroscopy. Non-linear windowing Windowing functions that compensate for the inherent non-linearity of various modalities such as film. RA 600 includes exponential, logarithmic and sigmoid functions. Source of a study, a specific site for example, when using teleradiology. Using the mouse to move an image in a viewport if, for example, the image has been magnified and can no longer be shown in its entirety in the viewport. General term for all forms that can be scanned using the RA 600 Document Scanner Module. Information on the patient that needs to be added to a study. A view of the studies in a database grouped according to the patients the studies concern (see study list). Part of the Viewing Section that gives an overview of all images in the study or studies that have been opening for viewing. You can select which images appear in your viewports by clicking on the miniature images in the Pictorial Index. There are also a Pictorial Indexes in other parts of RA 600, such as acquisition, which serve a similar purpose. Smallest unit of image information. Marker for a point of interest. When a probe has been placed in an image, it shows the pixel value at the chosen location.
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334 appendix E Quality Control A RA 600 Quality Control workstation is used to ensure that studies and series made available on a hospital network are correct and include the correct patient information. Part of an image that deserves special attention. Usually used while digitizing films. ROIs can be cut out from a complete image. This saves disk space and reduces transmission time during teleradiology. If this is selected in the Viewing Section, the images in the viewports will be shown so that they will just fit in the viewport no matter what size they were acquired at originally. This is the way RA 600 normally initially displays images in the viewports. See also Absolute size. A view of a database on another system connected to your RA 600 system via a network. Process of digitizing documents. A collection of a number of images typically acquired at the same time by the same modality. A black overlay over the viewport which contains a window through which you can view part of the image. Useful for hiding bright, distracting parts of an image when you want to examine specific detail. A non-linear windowing function that modifies the pixel data so that lower and higher values are shown in a wider range of gray tones. It is used to compensate for inherent non-linearity in various modalities. An archive of medical images created by RA 600 using storage media such as CD and DVD. User-configurable key combinations that allow you to save studies and change their status quickly and easily. Manual cine loops. A cine loop in which you can step through the images that make up the cine.
Relative size
Sigmoid windowing
Stack-mode displays
335 Status Storage commitment Condition of a specific study: New, Seen, Received, Reported, Transcribed, Approved etc. The process of ensuring that medical image data sent over a DICOM network is not only transmitted correctly but retained at the other end. Number of interrelated images of one patient which may consist of a number of series. Consists of an overview of all studies in a database arranged as a list of studies (see patient list). See Linked cines. Images that have been marked for inclusion in a cine loop. Sets of buttons that perform particular commands. You can readily create your own tool bars in RA 600 containing the functions you use most frequently. To be found in various parts of RA 600, tool tabs contain interrelated commands and functions. They can be compared with menus in other software applications. The process of sending and receiving medical images, either using the telephone network (ISDN) or within the hospital over the network. The process of sending and receiving studies from one site to another. The display of images at their actual size. This allows you to make measurements directly across the screen. One cm in the display will be the same as one cm on the patient. Your monitor will need to be regularly calibrated to display images at true size. Part of RA 600 that shows the actual medical images. The Viewing Section consists of the Pictorial Index, viewports, the tool tabs, local data window and Reports window.
Tool tabs
Teleradiology
Viewing Section
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G L O S S A R Y
336 appendix E Viewport Virtual film sheet Segment of the Viewing Section that actually displays images of frames in a study. In the Viewing Section, you can place individual images on virtual film sheets which you can then print. They offer a quick means of selecting images and creating hard copy of them. Equivalent to Region of Interest, except in three dimensions rather than two. Used in MPR/MIP to have RA 600 only consider image data within a certain volume. One of the most effective lossy compression algorithms for medical teleradiology. This is provided as an option with RA 600 and is proprietary to it. A character, generally an asterisk (*) in RA 600, that you can use to indicate any character string when performing a query. Changing the light/dark and contrast settings of images. A server that allows different RA 600 systems (clients) to view the same data. Studies placed on the server can be seen in the Data Selector of all the clients and can be opened for viewing. A set of tasks to be undertaken which may be provided by a HIS or RIS. A customizable view of studies in a database or worklist. A form of lossless compression used by RA 600 when saving studies after acquisition. It is proprietary to RA 600. The extent to which an image is displayed enlarged on the screen. A zoom factor of 1 means that images are shown in viewports at either absolute or relative size (depending on which of these has been selected). Enlarging the images in the viewport.
Wavelet compression
Wildcard
Zoom factor
Zooming
337
Index A
Absolute size 112, 327 Absolute zoom factor 37 Acquiring images 232 acquisition device types 232 acquisition screen 234 controlling acquisition devices 237 importing graphics files 240 importing images via clipboard 240 manipulating acquired images 241 mixing acquisition types 242 procedure for 236 rearranging images in Pictorial Index 243 refining acquired images 241 removing from Pictorial Index 243 sending studies automatically when saving 291 starting 234 Acquisition devices, controlling from RA 600 237 Acquisition screen 234 Acquisition tooltab in acquisition screen 236 in Data Selector 234 Active mode for cutlines 327 Active viewport 33, 327 Add View dialog box 269 Adding buttons to toolbars 298 overlay images 138 series to study in quality control 284 Adjusting annotation level in viewports 41 overlay images 138 windowing of images 97 AMI Private presentation states 94 Angles, measuring in viewports 40, 130 Annotating images with markers and text 38, 122 Annotation assigning level in hanging protocol 179 automatic labels 134 changing appearance of 123 copying to other viewports 133 cutting, copying and pasting between viewports 123, 133 of multi-frame images 161 patient 122 pre-defined text 125 removing 123 saving appearance settings 123 setting level of when printing 251 setting level of when viewing 41, 122 showing and hiding 94, 97, 159, 318 user information 135 Annotation and Measurement tooltab 38, 122 Applying collages 168 Archive buffer description of 328 Area properties assigning to hanging protocols 179 Arranging images in series during acquisition 243 Auto Transmit definition of 328 using for key images 110 Automatic labels to help reporting 134 Automatically compressing incoming studies 68 orientating images using hanging protocols 179 sending key images 110 setting windowing 98 Automating quality control 276 Available printers displaying 254
B
Blending overlay images 139 BMP files, importing for acquisition 240 Body part specific check box 99 Body parts pre-defined window settings for 98 Buttons - adding, removing and changing on toolbars 298
C
Calipers 127 CD Viewer viewing images 268 Changing buttons on toolbars 298 default layouts 182 demographics that can be edited in quality control 292 images on virtual film sheets 259 layout of viewports 88, 89 offset of linked cines 120 patient information displayed in viewports 122
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patient orientation in quality control 284 priority of hanging protocol 175 remote views 78 status of studies 151 windowing of images 97 Chest film, viewing 311 Cine loops assigning to viewports in hanging protocols 180 comparing 158 creating in MPR/MIP 186, 195 creating in Viewing Section 37 creating links between 119 definition of 328 linking methods 120 manual 117, 118 saving in MPR/MIP 203 setting the speed of 117 stopping 116, 118 synchronizing 119 tagging images for inclusion in 117 up, down and bounce 116 viewing multi-frame images as 160 Cine tooltab in MPR/MIP 195 in Viewing Section 37, 116 Clipboard copying single images to 147 using to export study information 53 using to import images 240 COBB angle measurement 130, 328 Collages additional facts 168 creating 167 description of 167 restrictions 168 selecting 168 sending 168 tooltab 167 Combining series in quality control 283 Common tasks printing viewport images 320 sending a report 313 viewing a chest film 311 Comparing cine loops 158 multiple profiles by pinning 130 studies and series 156 Compose Print Job dialog box 258 Compose Teleradiology Job dialog box 220 Compression CD Viewer 268 in teleradiology 222 of studies to save disk space 67 telling if compression used when viewing studies 224 Configuring demographics editing in quality control 292 hanging protocols 175, 178 location of buttons in Viewing Section 103 RA 600 for copying from read-write medium 269 read-write medium for single media archive 264 single media archive for read-only medium 262 study statuses 152 Viewing Section 85 windowing parameters 95 Continuous frame grabbing 237 Contrast splitting images according to 287 Copying annotation between viewports 133 annotation to other viewports 133 image overlays to other images 137 images to clipboard 147 masks to other images 137 Create Cine tooltab in MPR/MIP 194 Creating collages 167 filters 115 filters in worklist views 73 folders 26, 317 hanging protocols 177 image formats for acquisition 238 image overlays 42, 136 inverted window ROI 42, 136 magnifying glasses 112 manual cine loops (stack-mode displays) 117, 118 masks and overlays 41, 136 overlays 136 pre-defined text annotations 125 pre-defined windowing settings 98 presentation states 92 print layouts 260 remote views 77 ROIs 130 shutters 41, 136 studies from different acquisition types 242 studies using acquisition 232 toolbars 297 Criteria for determining cutlines 164 for using MPR/MIP 186 Current Study Status dialog box 277 Custom filters 115 Customize dialog box 297 Customizing RA 600 296 toolbars 297 Cutlines criteria for determining 164 description of 328 displaying 163 normal and active modes 327 show and hiding 170 using to select images 165
339
viewing multiple sets of 166 Disk space saving by compressing studies 67 viewing how much is left 26 Displaying available printers 254 Displaying cutlines in viewports 163 Distance line, measuring in viewport with 39, 128, 129 Document scanners, controlling from within RA 600 237 Double oblique images in MPR/MIP viewport 189 Dragging with mouse in MPR/MIP viewports 190 to pan in viewports 102 Drawing ROIs 130 Drawing ROIs 136
F
Filing tooltab 66, 77 Film digitizers, controlling from RA 600 237 Filter sets for image enhancement 115 Filtering resetting with single mouse-click 60 setting up in worklist views 73 studies 55 Filters creating 115 Finding studies by filtering 55, 56, 59, 60 by querying 59, 60 by typing first characters of item 54 Fine tuning hanging protocols 181 Folders creating 26, 66, 317 filtering in Data Selector 56 moving studies between 66 renaming and removing 66 Fonts, changing 304 Frame grabbers, controlling from RA 600 237
D
Data import graphics files 240 Data Selector introduction to 22 sending images from 210 Data Selector tooltab 55 Declaration of conformity 325 for Centricity Radiology RA 600 325 Default hanging protocols 64 changing 182 disabling 183 managing 182 removing 183 selecting to use for viewing 182 Delete locks locked study in selection 50 to protect studies 329 Deleting images in quality control 283 presentation states 94 studies from your hard disk 50 Demographics configuring editing in quality control 292 editing 281 Detect Edges filter 114 DICOM criterion in hanging protocol 179 DICOM tags entering for worklist views 72 Directly viewing worklist items 171 Disabling automated hanging protocols 176, 183 default hanging protocols 183
E
Ease of use of Centricity RA 600 12 Echo time splitting images according to 287 Edit Demographics dialog box 281 Editing demographics 281 Enhance Edges filter 114 Excel, importing ROI information into 131 Exponential windowing function 99 Exporting hanging protocols 176, 183 images as TIFF files 147 Print Log 255 ROI information to Excel 131 Send Log 218 single images 147 study information via clipboard 53
G
General viewing modes in Hanging Protocol Editor 181 Graphics file reader 240 Graphics files exporting 147 importing 240
H
Hang criteria
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assigning to hanging protocols 179 definition of 330 Hanging Protocol Fine Tuning dialog box 181 Hanging Protocol Editor 178 Hanging Protocol Fine Tuning dialog box 181 Hanging protocol wizards 177 Hanging protocols 174 assigning area properties to 179 assigning hang criteria to 179 creating 177 defining for a plug-in 142 disabling 176, 183 fine tuning 181 importing and exporting 176, 183 manually selecting 175 opening studies to use hanging protocols 174 removing 175 setting conditions for one which will be used 181 setting priority of 175 time dependent criteria 179 Hanging Protocols Manager 175 Hard disk viewing space left on 50 Hiding Pictorial Index 86 Reports window 296 screen elements 13 toolbars 297 worklists 296 Highlighting parts of worklist views 74 copying to other images 137 creating 42, 136 how to draw 136 showing and hiding 137 windowing 139 Image Type Settings dialog box 238 Images acquiring 232 adding pre-defined text annotations to 125 adding to Pictorial Index after acquisition 236 arranging in series during acquisition 243 browsing using the keyboard 103 browsing with Up and Down buttons 103 combining in Quality Control 287 creating in MPR and MIP 189 deleting from your hard disk 50 displaying cutlines on 163 displaying in viewports 89 enhancing with filters 114 exporting as TIFF files 147 flipping 37 importing via clipboard 240 including and excluding from cines 117 manipulating in acquisition screen 241 measuring 39, 127 orientating using hanging protocols 179 panning 102 placing in viewports for study compare 157 printing single images 147 printing while viewing 257 printing with virtual film sheets 320 rearranging and removing in quality control 283 removing from your local view 50 removing in Quality Control 283 renumbering in quality control 284 rotating 37 selecting for display in cines 117 selecting with cutlines 165 sending from Viewing Section 220 sending using teleradiology 206, 210 showing and hiding overlays on 126 sorting in Pictorial Index 85 tagging for display in cines 117 unpinning 106 viewing 3-D images with MPR and MIP 186 viewing as they arrive 171 viewing at absolute size 112 viewing at relative size 112 viewing at true size 112, 184 viewing in monitoring mode 173 Importing graphics files 240 hanging protocols 176, 183 images for acquisition 232 images via clipboard 240 studies from remote to local view 51 Importing ROI information into Excel 131 Incoming studies automatically compressing 68 viewing in monitoring mode 173 Index Tool 328 Index tool lending volumes 271 marking volumes lost 272 removing volumes 272 returning volumes 271 Indexing volumes in archive index 270 Info dialog box 53 Information on patients in viewports 122 Initial filters in worklist views 73
I
Image enhancement using filter sets 115 Image overlays
341
Initial sort in worklist views 72 Integration module 303 Inverted window ROI creating 42, 136
M
Magnifying glasses 112 and multi-frame images 161 windowing inside 113 Managing automated hanging protocols 175 default hanging protocols 182 Mandatory patient information 245 Manipulating views in MPR and MIP 189 Marker, annotating with 38, 122 Marking key images 108 Mask tooltab 136 Masks copying to other images 137 how to draw 136 saving 138 showing and hiding 137 working with 41, 136 Master cine, selecting 119 Matching studies in Quality Control 282 Maximum filter 114 Maximum Number of Copies when printing 251 Measurement profile 129 Measurements copying between viewports 123 saving 132 Measuring small angles using COBB 130 Measuring images with distance line 39, 128, 129 with probe 39, 127 with profile window 40, 129 with ROIs 40, 130 Median filter 114 Minimum filter 114 MIP
J
JPEG compression 223
K
Key images automatically sending 110 creating, viewing, saving and removing 107 setting display of in hanging protocol 181 Keyboard creating shortcuts for 299 using for scrolling through images 104
adjusting display speed 197 annotating images in 199 automatic quality setting 197 dragging in viewports 190 how it works 186 introduction to 186 manipulating views in 189 measuring images in 199 mouse action settings 190 pixel range 197 Quality tooltab 197 quick setup for cine loops 194 requirements for 186, 187 returning to well-defined section 190 saving cine loops 203 screen layout 187 selecting series to open 187 setting display quality 197 setting up cine loops 195 speed versus image quality 197 starting 187 Modalities filtering in Data Selector 56 Modifying default layouts 182 images on virtual film sheets 259 patient information displayed in viewports 122 patient orientation in quality control 284 presentation states 93 remote views 78 study state in archive index tool 273 worklist views 71 Monitoring print process 253 send process in teleradiology 214 Monitoring mode 173 Moving annotation between viewports 133 elements around screen 296
L
Labels for reporting 134 Layout pool 260 Layout tooltab in Viewing Section 32 Layouts changing 89 changing viewport configuration 89 Layouts, selecting for printing 251 Linking methods for cine loops 120 Local database, viewing in Data Selector 47 Locking studies against deletion 331 Logarithmic windowing function 99 Lossless and lossy compression 222
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Pictorial Index 86 studies between folders 26, 66 MPR annotating images in 199 dragging in viewports 190 how it works 186 introduction to 186 manipulating views in 189 measuring images in 199 mouse action settings 190 moving crosshairs in 189 pixel range 197 quick setup for cine loops 194 requirements for 186, 187 returning to well-defined section 190 saving cine loops 203 screen layout 187 selecting series to open 187 setting up cine loops 195 speed versus image quality 197 starting 187 MPR/MIP screen 187 MPR/MIP tooltab 189 Multi-frame images annotating 161 description of 332 printing 161 using the Pictorial Index with 159 viewing as cine loops 160 viewing individual frames of 161 working with 159 Multiple ROIs, viewing information on 131 Multiple studies selecting in study list 84 Multiple viewports setting Scope to 91
N
Non-linear windowing functions 36, 99 Nuclear Medicine multi-frame images in 159
Pictorial Index changing width of 85 hiding and showing 86, 296 in acquisition screen 234 multi-frame images in 159 navigating with 85 rearranging images in during acquisition 243 relocating on screen 86 reversing order of images in 85 sorting images in 85 using to fill viewports with images 89 viewing multiple studies in 84 windowing independently 85 Pinning viewports 33 when comparing studies 157, 158 Pixel range in MPR/MIP 197 Placing images in viewports 89, 91 Plug-ins hanging protocol integration 142 viewing 141 Pre-defined text annotations 125 windowing settings 98 Pre-defined text annotations setting up 125 Presentation sheets 149 Presentation states additional facts 94 AMI Private 94 creating 92 deleting 94 modifying 93 viewing 94 Print jobs 253 Print Log 255 exporting 255 removing entries in 255
O
Offset of linked cine loops changing 120 Orientating images using hanging protocols 179 Origins filtering in Data Selector 56 Overlay images adding and adjusting 138 changing transparency of 139 synchronizing quality of 140 Overlays copying to other images 137 creating 136 how to draw 136 showing and hiding 137 windowing 139 working with 41, 136 Overlays on images, showing 126
P
Palette color lookup table 101 Panning and scope 102 in viewports 33, 102 Patient demographics editing 281 Patient orientation changing in quality control 284 Patient Orientation dialog box 284 Patient view selecting 25, 48, 317
343
Print Queue 253 Print Study dialog box 251 Print tooltab in Data Selector 250 Printers finding out which are available 254 status of 254 Printing 253 Compose Print Job dialog box 258 destinations list 250 exporting Print Log 255 from the Data Selector 250 images while viewing them 257 indicators on tooltab 253 inserting header at top of page 251 introduction to 250 Maximum Number of Copies when 251 monitoring 253 multi-frame images 161 multiple series 252 Print Log 255 Print Queue 253 Print Study dialog box 251 priority settings 250 removing entries in Print Log 255 reprinting printed job 255 resubmitting printed job 255 selecting printer for 250 setting annotation level 251 setting annotation level of first image 251 single image 257 single images 147 single viewport 148 study information using clipboard 53 using virtual film sheets 257 viewing printed jobs in detail 255 viewport 257 viewport images 320 virtual film sheets 259 Printing with virtual film sheets 257 Priority of hanging protocol 175 Probe, measuring with 39, 127 Profiles comparing by pinning 130 creating 129 removing from viewport 130 Putting studies 'on hold' 170 in Data Selector 277 on Quality Control screen 279 Quality of images in MPR/MIP 197 when zooming 112 Quality of overlay images synchronizing 140 Quality tooltab in MPR/MIP 197 Queries defining in worklist views 73 resetting with single mouse-click 60 Querying volumes and studies 273 Quick browsing with Up and Down buttons 103
Q
Quality Control splitting images using contrast 287 splitting images using echo time 287 splitting series and studies in 286 Quality control adding series to studies 284 automatically creating mapping lists 282 automatically matching studies in 282 automatically sending studies 291 automating 276 changing patient orientation 284 combining series 283 configuring demographics editing 292 copies of studies in 278 introduction to 276 local studies window 279 opening study for 278 Quality Control screen 279 rearranging images 283 renumbering images 284 starting 278 using RA 600 for 276 worklist window 279 workstations 276 Quality Control Module Properties dialog box 292 Quality Control screen 279 Quality Control tooltab
R
RA 600 customizing 296, 297 Radio Fluoroscopy multi-frame images in 159 Receive Log in teleradiology 207 exporting (saving) 208 removing entries from 208 viewing entry details in 208 Receive New Study and monitoring mode 173 Receive Queue in teleradiology 209 Receiving studies with teleradiology 207 Redirecting images to back-up sites 227 Relative size 112, 334 Relative zoom factor 37 Remote studies viewing directly 28, 65, 171 Remote views creating 77 displaying 27, 49
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displaying studies in empty remote view 49 importing studies from 51 modifying 78 querying to show studies in 27, 49 removing 78 selecting 49 Removing annotation 123 buttons from toolbars 298 entries in Print Log 255 hanging protocols 175, 183 images in Quality Control 283 images in quality control 283 key images 108 magnifying glasses 112 pre-defined windowing settings 98 profiles from viewports 130 protecting studies against 69 remote views 78 series in quality control 283 studies from your local view 50 toolbars 298 worklist views 71 Renumbering images in quality control 284 Reporting using automatic labels for 134 Reporting on studies, introduction to 42 Reporting profiles 145 Reports sending 313 Reports window selecting 143 showing and hiding 296 viewing 134, 135, 143 Reprinting already printed job 255 Requirements for displaying cutlines 164 for MPR and MIP 187
Centricity Radiology RA 600 V6.1 reference guide online
for teleradiology 206 Reset button in viewing 90 Resubmitting already printed print job 255 Right mouse button menu selecting hanging protocol with 88 ROI statistics, exporting to Excel 131 ROIs creating 41, 130 removing 100 using for measurement 40 viewing information on 131
images for display in cines 117 images with cutlines 165 master cine to synchronize loops to 119 multiple studies and series for viewing 156 multiple studies in study list 84 remote views 49 series to open in MPR and MIP 187 viewport layouts 88 Send Log in teleradiology 218 exporting (saving) 218 removing entries from 218 Send Queue in teleradiology 214 Send To... dialog box in teleradiology 211 Sending collages 168 images using the Data Selector 210 reports 313, 319 studies with teleradiology 206 Series adding to study in quality control 284 combining in quality control 283 comparing 156 deleting from your hard disk 50 printing from Data Selector 250 rearranging and removing in quality control 283 rearranging images of in Pictorial Index 85 removing from your local view 50 removing in Quality Control 283 selecting multiple series for viewing 156 sending using teleradiology 210 viewing a series within a study 52, 62 viewing as they arrive 171 Series areas defining 89
S
Saving cine loops in MPR/MIP 203 flip and rotate actions 113 masks 138 measurements in viewports 132 Print Log 255 Receive Log in teleradiology 208 studies with single keystroke 300 Scanners, controlling from within RA 600 237 Scope controlling panning in viewports with 102 importance of for comparing studies 157 setting in Hanging Protocol Editor 181 setting to multiple viewports 91 Scout image, pinning in viewport 106 Scrolling images using the keyboard 104 Select Layout dialog box for printing 251 Selecting hanging protocols 175, 182
345
Server workgroup 336 Setting speed of cine loops 117 Setting up printers 252 Shadowing filter 114 Sharpening filter 114 Shortcuts, creating for keyboard 299 Showing Pictorial Index 86 reports window 296 screen elements 13 toolbars 297 worklists 296 Shutters 334 creating 41, 136 Sigmoid windowing function 99 Single Media Archive to configure 262 Single media archive configuring for read-only medium 262 configuring for read-write medium 264 viewing data in worklist view 269 Single oblique images in MPR/MIP viewport 189 Smoothing filter 114 Sorting defining in worklist views 72 images in Pictorial Index 85 Special commands creating 300 description of 334 Split/Join tooltab 279, 286 Splitting series and studies in Quality Control 286 Starting image acquisition 234 MPR and MIP 187 quality control 278 STAT exam opening while viewing another study 170 Status of studies, changing 151 Storage commitment description of 335 setting up 228 Studies adding series to in quality control 284 automatically compressing incoming 68 automatically sending in quality control 291 automatically unlocking after sending 226 changing the status of 151 comparing 156 compressing to save disk space 67 creating from different acquisition types 242 creating using acquisition 232 deleting from your hard disk 50 filtering 23 importing from remote to local view 51 importing rather than viewing directly 28 moving to folders 26, 66 opening copy of for quality control 278 opening for quality control 277 printing from Data Selector 250 putting 'on hold' 170 receiving with teleradiology 207 removing from local view 50 removing from status history list 277 saving with single keystroke 300 selecting all from same patient 56 selecting multiple studies for viewing 156 sending in an emergency 215 sending with teleradiology 206, 210 setting priority of when transmitting 215 viewing 62, 156 viewing as they arrive 171 viewing details on in Data Selector 52 viewing directly 28, 65, 171 viewing in monitoring mode 173 viewing one after the other 63 viewing status of 277, 281 Study information exporting via clipboard 53 Study lists arranging order of columns in 80 viewing in Data Selector 47 Study status histories, viewing 277, 281 Study statuses assigning reporting profiles to 146 changing 151 configuring 152 Study view, selecting 25, 48 Synchronizing cine loops 119 quality of overlay images 140
T
Tagging images for cine display 117 Teleradiology automatic transmission 225 back-up sites 227 Compose Teleradiology Job dialog box 220 compression types for 222 controlling send jobs 214 Export dialog box 208 exporting (saving) Receive Log 208 exporting (saving) Send Log 218
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introduction to 206 locking and unlocking studies in 226 monitoring send process 214 Receive Log 207 Receive Queue 209 receiving studies 207 removing entries from Receive Log 208 removing entries from Send Log 218 requirements for 206 Send Log 218 Send Queue 214 Send To... dialog box 211 Sending images from Viewing Section 220 sending reports 319 viewing details in Receive Log 208 viewing details on sent studies 218 viewing what has been received 207 Teleradiology tooltab in Data Selector 207, 208 in Viewing Section 220 Text, adding annotation to viewport 39 TIFF files exporting images as 147 importing for acquisition 240 Time ordering criterion in hanging protocol 179 Time-out value for storage commitment 229 Toolbars adding buttons to 298 creating 297 Tooltab collages 167 Tooltabs Acquisition in acquisition screen 236 Acquisition in Data Selector 234 Annotation and Measurement 38, 122 Cine in MPR/MIP 195 Cine in Viewing Section 37, 116 Create Cine in MPR/MIP 194 Filing 66, 77 Filtering 114 Layout in Viewing Section 32, 88 Mask 136 MPR/MIP 189 Print in Data Selector 250 Quality Control in Data Selector 277 Quality Control on Quality Control screen 279 Quality tooltab in MPR/MIP 197 Split/Join in Quality Control 279, 286 Teleradiology in Data Selector 207, 208 Teleradiology in Viewing Section 220 Windowing 97 Zooming and Flip/Rotate 36, 111, 140 Transparency of overlay images 139 True size 112 viewing images at 37, 184 True size display description of 335 3-D images with MPR and MIP 186 chest film 311 cine loops 37, 116 cine loops in MPR/MIP 195 details on sent studies in teleradiology 218 images as they arrive 171 images at true size 37, 184 images with CD Viewer 268 in monitoring mode 173 information on multiple ROIs 131 key images 107 multi-frame images 159 presentation states 94 printing images while 257 putting studies 'on hold' 170 received studies in teleradiology 207 selecting a layout for 64 single frame of multi-frame images 161 single series within a study 62 studies from single medium archive in worklist view 269 studies one after the other 63 study status histories 277, 281 undoing action when 90 Viewing remote studies directly 28, 65, 171 Viewing Section sending images from with teleradiology 220 Viewing tooltab in Viewing Section 88 Viewport printing 148 Viewport areas defining 89 Viewport layouts, selecting 88 Viewports active 33, 327 browsing in 103
U
Ultrasound multi-frame images in 159 Undo limitations of 90 while viewing images 90 Unpinning images 106 User information 135
V
Viewing
347
changing layout of 89 changing patient information displayed in 122 copying annotation between 123 copying images from the clipboard 147 creating automatic labels in 134 creating cines in 117, 118 creating layouts for 157 cutting, copying and pasting annotation between 133 displaying cutlines in 163 filling with images 157 introduction to 15 measuring in 127 MPR/MIP 188 panning in 33, 102 pinning for study compare 158 pinning images in 33, 106 printing 147, 257, 320 selecting multiple 91 transversal, coronal and sagittal in MPR/MIP 188 zooming in 111 Virtual film sheets 257, 320, 336 adding to and modifying 258 modifying images on 258 using pre-defined settings 35, 97 using the tooltab slider 36, 97 with right mouse button 35, 318 Windowing tooltab 97 Windows printers, setting up 252 Wizards hanging protocol 177 Workgroup server 336 Worklist items viewing directly 171 Worklist views creating filters in 73 defining initial queries for 73 defining sorts in 72 highlighting parts of 74 Worklists adding patient information using 245 hiding 296 in Acquisition screen 235 in Quality Control screen 279 showing on screen 296
X
X-ray Angiography multi-frame images in 159
W
Windowing assigning to hanging protocols 179 defining parameters for 95 entering values for 35, 97 exponential function 99 image overlays 139 inside magnifying glass 113 logarithmic function 99 non-linear functions 36, 99 Pictorial Index 85 pre-defined sets for body parts 98 sigmoid function 99
Z
Zooming and quality of images 112 assigning to hanging protocols 179 in fixed steps 111 in viewports 111 with magnifying glasses 112 with slider 111 Zooming and Flip/Rotate tooltab 36, 111, 140
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