As part of the recent service upgrade and data migration at the Radiotherapy department in Raigmore Hospital, Pukka-j recently installed and configured the Nexus DICOM streaming service to facilitate the process.  Following the successful migration, Nexus was left in place with a view to the department being able to streamline the work processes in place.

Following some testing, it was apparent to the department that there was some inter-connectivity issues between the new CT scanner and the planning / processing workstations in the department.  In particular, the way in which the Y value in the patient position information was calculated differently between the scanner and the workstation.  This resulted in issues with planning.  In order to help the department solve the immediate problem, Pukka-j implemented an extension to the DICOM tag manipulation node within Nexus to allow the department to specify how the Y value of the patient image position should be modified between the two systems.

A second workflow issue was also found by the department in that some values in a scan were potentially incorrect but wouldn’t be noticed until after a patient had left the department.  In order to alert the department as quickly as possible to any potentially incorrect settings, a new notification node was added to the Nexus service that has the ability to notify users via email if DICOM studies with a specific pattern are observed.  The service has been configured to email the users with information on the potentially incorrect values in the DICOM header so that it can be reviewed before the patient has left the department.