Patient Histories

[firedrow]

Does PacsOne accept patient histories? And if so, why would it not send them on? One of our connecting clinics has been sending everything to a RADbox, which forwards to our PACS. But the RADbox is dying, so I built a PacsOne box to replace the RADbox. But our patient histories do not come across the PacsOne.

[pacsone]

It depends on how the Patient History information is encoded:

If it's encoded using the standard Dicom Patient History data element (0010, 21B0), then PacsOne wil parse and save them into the database table. Otherwise if it's encoded using a private storage SOP class, PacsOne will reject it if the private storage SOP class is not supported.

So you should check the sending application and see how the Patient History is encoded in the Dicom images. If it's encoded using the first method mentioned above, and you don't see the Patient History from the Patient Information page of PacsOne, then this sounds like a bug, and we would need a sample image in order to trouble-shoot where the problem is. If this is the case, please send a sample image in a zip file to mailto:pacsone@pacsone.net.

[firedrow]

I called the sending radiology tech, and they told me they put patient history in the PatientComments field (0010, 4000).

[pacsone]

Patient Comments (0010,4000) is indeed parsed and saved in the PATIENT table of the PacsOne Server database. You can view this information from the Patient Information page after you click on the More Information link from the patient list.

[firedrow]

In the description column, it says unknown. But I do see the sent data in the third column of the DICOM table. Can I edit something to define (0010,4000) as PatientComments on the information page? Also, this information doesn't seem to be making it to our Integrad PACS, any suggestions?

[pacsone]

You can check whether the (0010,4000) data element is present in the received images of this patient, by clicking the URL link underneath any of the thumbnail images of this patient from the Image Thumbnails page, which will display all the Dicom data elements encoded in the raw Dicom image file.

Then you can check if this (0010,4000) data element is indeed present. If not, that will explain why you're not seeing it in PacsOne, and why the other PACS does not have it either when it receives the same image from PacsOne.

[firedrow]

That's how I knew it was (0010,4000). I found the information fields, and they had the patient history in it. But the (0010,4000) doesn't seem to be moving past our PacsOne box. I'm going to do some more testing with a false study.

[pacsone]

The information contained in the (0010,4000) data element is transmitted along with the rest of the Dicom image, but whether or not the receiving application recognizes or makes any use of this information is a different question.