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At Cookridge Hospital, Pukka-J delivered a DICOM store designed specifically for Oncology workflow as part of the Leeds Clinical Treatment System (CTS).

When looking for a system to handle, store and transfer oncology data, Cookridge Hospital wanted to take the opportunity to develop and improve existing radiotherapy systems and be able to store all images, plus RT objects including RT plans and RT structures, in a single central location. They required robust permanent and semi-permanent storage, with the possibility of evolving into a future PACS system. In addition, it should be ‘future proof’, fully DICOM-compliant, and also compliant with the emerging NHS information requirements (NPfIT/Connecting for Health).
One of the known difficulties with Radiotherapy Treatment Planning is system integration, since some of the devices are not fully DICOM compliant. Pukka-J met the challenge by providing the DICOM infrastructure for a central repository for radiotherapy images to be stored, and at the same time dealt with the different DICOM characteristics across the mix of vendors. The intelligent DICOM Store is capable of facilitating the centralised storage and also of sharing oncology data across a heterogeneous mix of radiology and radiotherapy modalities. The Store can handle DICOM radiotherapy objects, a mix of radiology DICOM images, while at the same time importing DICOM images from a local network, as well as importing DICOM images from referring hospitals.
Bob Wheller, Head of Radiotherapy Technology Services, Cookridge Hospital, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust says:

We selected Pukka-J because we felt we would get value for money with cost effective DICOM storage. In addition the Company was extremely flexible and had the ability to develop the system within the stipulated timescales. With a thorough grasp of the complexity of radiotherapy services, Pukka-J responded quickly to problems we encountered.

In fact, there are three separate stores. Firstly, an Image Import Store for remote images to be sent or copied from a referring hospital CD. This Store contains a quarantine area which deals with any conflicts with patient or hospital demographics’ information, filtering and modifying such information prior to entering the second Store.
The second store is the “Radiotherapy Planning Store – a temporary repository for the Treatment Planning Department, and described by Cookridge as a big patient folder since it is used to automatically transfer radiotherapy and radiology objects backwards and forwards between mixed manufacturer radiotherapy planning modalities. Images are automatically routed between the processes and computers that perform the RT services such as treatment planning and treatment delivery.
The third and final store is the Main Store for the permanent storage of all images and valid RT objects that are used in the actual treatments. It holds the patient’s data after the course of treatment, and is held ready for PACS storage, where it can be easily integrated or migrated into any major PACS system.
As a safety net, Pukka-J also delivered a resilient back-up and redundancy to the DICOM Store. Using the Pukka-J’s DICOM mirror software, data is automatically backed-up and provides a unique system – should any one unit fail, the mirrored DICOM Server prevents loss of data and workflow as everything is totally online and easily accessible.

Pukka-j has developed a unique Medical Disk Service (MDS) specifically designed for Nuclear Medicine and PET/CT departments to enable import or export of DICOM compliant CD or DVD removable media. To develop this new device, Pukka-j partnered with Rimage Corporation, the world’s largest and most experienced manufacturer of CD and DVD publishing, duplication and printing systems, providing state-of-the-art equipment, representing the very latest advances in CD and DVD publishing technology.

The device itself features an input bin for stacking multiple CD and DVD’s into one compartment of the MDS robot. The robot then takes one disk after the other from the stack, reads the image data ready for the department to view, store and manage. The system is so quick and easy that the stacks of CDs collecting dust on shelves could be a thing of the past in Nuclear Medicine departments.
The MDS, customised by Pukka-j, enables a completely web-based solution that can be accessed via any networked PC. It intelligently manages all imported images via the Pukka-j DICOM Server by automatically sorting the imported images from the CD or DVD into multiple folders based on any DICOM field complete in the image header. This could be modality type, body part, institution or referring site. For instance, all PET CT image CDs acquired from mobile ISTC Service ‘A’ will be stored in one specific folder ready for image archive or distribution.

The system comes complete with an in-built short-term image cache server and can be easily expanded to feature Networked Attached Storage of up to several TB’s of RAID for long-term storage. It is also well suited for departments who wish to keep raw PET/CT and NM data separate from radiology images, where often only screen captures are relevant to the radiology PACS/RIS. In addition, the imported image’s unique identifier can be prefixed by Pukka-j to enable the user group to identify, quickly and easily, all imported images and keep the data separate, but accessible from PACS workstations.
Another feature is Pukka-j’s inbuilt NM and PET CT connectivity which allows imported images to be viewed and manipulated on existing specialist Philips, Siemens and GE workstations.
The MDS image distribution is also well catered for with Pukka-j’s Advanced DICOM Rules for auto-forwarding data across the network. A typical rule could be to send all PET CT images to workstation A, B and C except head images, which can only be sent to workstation D.
For research and education requirements, an automated rule to remove the data and depersonalise the image can be applied to any image data, to remove patient, referrer and institution identification. The de-personalised data can then be auto-routed to a specified location or DICOM device/node via Pukka-j’s advanced Server rules.

Pukka-j is able to offer a ready-made solution for encryption and password protection that provides users with a flexible range of products, depending on the throughput of discs required by an organisation. For many years now, the Pukka-j product portfolio has contained encryption, password protection and anonymisation techniques, as essential tools for the user, enabling the confident distribution of discs as and when needed. One of the methods of sharing image data is to export images from a PACS or direct from an imaging modality to a CD or DVD for image-sharing distribution. Due to the recent Government Data Handling Review report, there is a mandatory requirement that all removable media, including CD and DVD containing patient data, must be password protected and encrypted for distribution.

Kevin Wilson, Managing Director of Pukka-j says:

Prior to the roll-out of Virtual Private Networks between Hospital and on-call A&E reporters, Pukka-j very early on utilised data protection methods for safeguarding sensitive details for our systems. This allowed images to be sent outside of the hospital network and across the internet, as the transmission of data across the internet required strict adherence to data security policies. As a company, we have always valued encryption, password protection and anonymisation, as user-essential tools for providing the assurances of data security within our product range.

For organisations requiring a high output of burning images to discs, Pukka-j is able to offer a full range of high-performance Rimage-manufactured publishing devices. The Pukka-j Medical Disk System (MDS) is a fully-integrated range of CD/DVD robots that require no additional PC to drive the process; the system can be connected to an imaging network, allowing the MDS to be accessed from anywhere on the network, and to be easily added as an existing PACS accessory. The Pukka-j system Administrator User Interface allows automatic encryption and password protection for all data being ordered to disks as a default setting, requiring no extra click from the user.