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.