There are three versions of Mango, each geared for a different platform:

-Mango – Desktop – Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
-webMango – Browser – Safari, Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer
-iMango – Mobile – Apple iPad

The latest updates as of this writing are from Dec 2014, so they are fairly recent.  Also the user rating on the website gives it a usability rating of 4/5 Stars.

Key Features:

– Built-in support for DICOM, NIFTI, Analyze, and NEMA-DES formats
– Customizable: Create plugins, custom filters, color tables, file formats, and atlases
– ROI Editing: Threshold and component-based tools for painting and tracing ROIs
– Surface Rendering: Interactive surface models supporting cut planes and overlays
– Image Registration: Semi-automatic image coregistration and manual transform editing
– Image Stacking: Threshold and transparency-based image overlay stacking
– Analysis: Histogram, cross-section, time-series analysis, image and ROI statistics
– Processing: Kernel and rank filtering, arithmetic/logic image and ROI calculators

[click here to download]

The post Mango Medical Image Viewer appeared first on Healthcare IT Systems.

It is fully compliant with the DICOM standard for image comunication and image file formats.

OsiriX is able to receive images transferred by DICOM communication protocol from any PACS or imaging modality (C-STORE SCP/SCU, andQuery/Retrieve : C-MOVE SCU/SCP, C-FIND SCU/SCP, C-GET SCU/SCP, WADO) .

OsiriX has been specifically designed for navigation and visualization of multimodality and multidimensional images: 2D Viewer, 3D Viewer, 4D Viewer (3D series with temporal dimension, for example: Cardiac-CT) and5D Viewer (3D series with temporal and functional dimensions, for example: Cardiac-PET-CT).

The 3D Viewer offers all modern rendering modes: Multiplanar reconstruction (MPR), Surface Rendering, Volume Rendering and Maximum Intensity Projection (MIP). All these modes support 4D data and are able to produce image fusion between two different series (PET-CT and SPECT-CT display support).

OsiriX is at the same time a DICOM PACS workstation for imaging and an image processing softwarefor medical research (radiology and nuclear imaging), functional imaging, 3D imaging, confocal microscopy and molecular imaging.

The post OsiriX DICOM PACS Viewer appeared first on Healthcare IT Systems.

K-PACS Server

• Store SCP (Service Class Provider)

K-PACS Viewer

Server connection and file import/export:

• Query/Retrieve SCU (Service Class User) on patient, study and series level
• Move SCU
• Store SCU from local K-PACS database or external DICOM data (e.g. CDs) to target archives
• Supported DICOM data compression: uncompressed, JPEG-Lossless (J1), JPEG-lossy (J4)
• Export of native DICOM data (with option for anonymization) e.g. into the currentDicomWorks folder
• Format conversion from DICOM to JPEG and Bitmap and vice versa
• 2-Click email export of DICOM studies with or without anonymization, compression or encryption
• Printing of DICOM images on Windows® printers
• Possibility to modify DICOM tags

Viewer:

• Regular tools: cine, zoom, magnifier, pan, windowing
• Measuring: distance, density (HE)
• Compare / tile-screen mode: between series of one study, different studies or different patient
• comfortable series preview bar with thumbnails

Download HERE

System requirements:

The post K-PACS Free DiCOM Server and DiCOM Viewer appeared first on Healthcare IT Systems.

holographic medical imaging

Launching on April 20^th, 2015, the campaign will introduce the company’s new Voxbox and Voxbox Pro. The 8-inch and 22-inch displays will allow consumers to view fully three dimensional holograms at home for the first time.

In addition to the two displays, the company will also offer a hologram production service. Users can submit nearly any set of 3D data to be made into a Voxgram hologram, such as a set of CT scans obtained from a doctor, a user created 3D model, or a 3D character downloaded from the Internet.

Read the rest of the article on Yahoo!

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Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) is one of the most exciting new technologies in breast imaging. DBT poses a challenge to existing departmental, enterprise, and cross-enterprise image storage, distribution and viewing infrastructures.

DBT is a relatively new modality that is finally coming to market after many years of development and evaluation. Early evidence suggests that it has superior performance to full-field digital mammography (FFDM). Accordingly, it is likely to become popular, and there are already hundreds of installations according to one of the currently approved vendors, despite there being no additional reimbursement for the use of DBT yet.

View this special forum and hear the discussion between early adopters, clinicians, and vendors on how to address the challenges posed by DBT images for acquisition, storage, distribution, compression, display, CAD and long-term archival.

Learn how to avoid repeating the same interoperability mistakes with DBT as the “first” time around with FFDM. In addition, examine how to make use of the DICOM Standard Breast Tomosynthesis object, rather than proprietary formats.

There were many great presentations that came from SiiM.  Here are a few of them.  They will all link from the Siim.org web site.

• Digital Breast Tomosynthesis & the Informatics Infra-Structure – Standards & Interoperability
• Imaging Innovations – Tying the Pieces Together
• Digital Breast Tomosynthesis – PACS/Workstation Vendor Perspective
•  Infrastructure Issues Regarding Digital Breast Tomo Implementation
• Tomosynthesis: Lessons Learned and Challenges
• Digital Breast Tomosynthesis & the Informatics Infra-Structure – How Digital Breast Tomosynthesis
• Tomosynthesis Display and Storage Dilemmas

The original information source is here.

The post DBT and PACS – The impact on informatics infrastructure appeared first on Healthcare IT Systems.

Years ago when I was working for an imaging vendor, they bought a technology company and leveraged to develop a PACS Vendor Neutral Archive.  The term was still in its infancy, however the functionality seemed obvious given the name ‘VNA’.

The integration process between our PACS and the new VNA went very well.  We were able to send various DICOM images from our PACS and the VNA was receiving everything without a glitch.  We were also able to query the VNA from our PACS Viewer and retrieve images.  Things were good…until…

It didn’t take long to see through the normal course of PACS Administration duties that corrections that were made in PACS did not forward to the VNA.  Image Pre-fetching was another function we had taken for granted that wasn’t a feature.  Two critical features that just ‘happened’ using a PACS system, were now not available.

One of the major benefits we had was owning PACS and our VNA was we were able to implement changes internally without involving any other vendors.

In this scenario the VNA and PACS both used Oracle databases.  Eventually we had the two Oracle databases linked to one another and updates and changes were being updated.

Before we got the synchronization issues worked out, coming in during the implementation and seeing the PACS Admins do reconciliations twice, once in PACS and once in the VNA, was not a good feeling.

One of the biggest challenges VNA companies are having now is synchronization with PACS.  The vendor I worked for accomplished with through database communication, however not every company has the luxury of controling both sides of an issue.

Vendors are able to take advantage of an an IHE profile called IOCM – Imaging Object Change Management in order to accomplish this task.

Imaging Object Change Management (IOCM) specifies how one actor communicates local changes applied on existing imaging objects to other actors that manage copies of the modified imaging objects in their own local systems. The supported changes include (1) object rejection due to quality or patient safety reasons, (2) correction of incorrect modality worklist entry selection, and (3) expiration of objects due to data retention requirements. It defines how changes are captured and how to communicate these changes.

Here is a great article from OTech Imaging the expands on the PACS/VNA synchronization issue.  Click >>>HERE<<< to read the article.  You’ll be directed to OTech Web site.

The post Is your VNA synchronized with your PACS? appeared first on Healthcare IT Systems.

Free DICOM Viewer From Osirix

OsiriX is an image processing software dedicated to DICOM images (“.dcm” / “.DCM” extension) produced by imaging equipment (MRI, CT, PET, PET-CT, SPECT-CT, Ultrasounds, …).

It is fully compliant with the DICOM standard for image communication and image file formats. OsiriX is able to receive images transferred by DICOM communication protocol from any PACS or imaging modality (C-STORE SCP/SCU, andQuery/Retrieve : C-MOVE SCU/SCP, C-FIND SCU/SCP, C-GET SCU/SCP, WADO) .

Here’s a couple of great DICOM and PACS resources from Amazon…great books.

The Free DICOM Viewer is located >>> HERE <<<.  Please note that is does not have FDA clearance and is used for research purposes only.  Osirix does have FDA approved DICOM viewers, but there is a licensing fee.

The viewers also only run on the Mac.  The system requirements are:

• MacOS X 10.8 or higher
• Intel processor
• 6 GB of RAM if you plan to open more than 800 images (CT & MRI, PET-CT).
• 8 GB of RAM for more than 1500 images (multi-slice CT & PET-CT) with OsiriX-64 bit.
• 12 GB of RAM for more than 3000 images (cardiac or functional imaging) with OsiriX-64 bit.

OsiriX has been specifically designed for navigation and visualization of multimodality and multidimensional images: 2D Viewer, 3D Viewer, 4D Viewer (3D series with temporal dimension, for example: Cardiac-CT) and5D Viewer (3D series with temporal and functional dimensions, for example: Cardiac-PET-CT). The 3D Viewer offers all modern rendering modes: Multiplanar reconstruction (MPR), Surface Rendering, Volume Rendering and Maximum Intensity Projection (MIP). All these modes support 4D data and are able to produce image fusion between two different series (PET-CT and SPECT-CT display support).

OsiriX is at the same time a DICOM PACS workstation for imaging and an image processing softwarefor medical research (radiology and nuclear imaging), functional imaging, 3D imaging, confocal microscopy and molecular imaging.

OsiriX has been specifically designed for navigation and visualization of multimodality and multidimensional images: 2D Viewer, 3D Viewer, 4D Viewer (3D series with temporal dimension, for example: Cardiac-CT) and5D Viewer (3D series with temporal and functional dimensions, for example: Cardiac-PET-CT). The 3D Viewer offers all modern rendering modes: Multiplanar reconstruction (MPR), Surface Rendering, Volume Rendering and Maximum Intensity Projection (MIP). All these modes support 4D data and are able to produce image fusion between two different series (PET-CT and SPECT-CT display support).

OsiriX is at the same time a DICOM PACS workstation for imaging and an image processing softwarefor medical research (radiology and nuclear imaging), functional imaging, 3D imaging, confocal microscopy and molecular imaging.

Osirix Free DICOM Viewer Pros:
+ Open source
+ Will open just about anything
+ Incredible 2D and 3D viewing options
+ Tight OS X integration
+ Excellent developer support
+ Universal binary
+ Heavily multithreaded (use those CPUs!)
+ International support
+ Impress your friends

Osirix Free DICOM Viewer Cons:
– 2.0+ versions only available for Tiger
– Some releases can be buggy
– No utility for ROI hand drawing (personal gripe)

The post Free DICOM Viewer From Osirix – Review appeared first on Healthcare IT Systems.

Compared to traditional mammography, 3D mammography—known as digital breast tomosynthesis—found 22 percent more breast cancers and led to fewer call backs in a large screening study at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP), researchers reported today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

Conventional digital mammography is the most widely-used screening modality for breast cancer, but may yield suspicious findings that turn out not to be cancer, known as false-positives. Such findings are associated with a higher recall rate, or the rate at which women are called back for additional imaging or biopsy that may be deemed unnecessary.


Tomosynthesis, however, allows for 3-D reconstruction of the breast tissue, giving radiologists a clearer view of the overlapping slices of breast tissue. And though a relatively new technology, it has shown promise at reducing recall rates in all groups of patients, including younger women and those with dense breast tissue.

This study, presented by Emily F. Conant, MD, chief of Breast Imaging the department of Radiology at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, is one of the largest prospective trials in tomosynthesis to date.

For the study, the research team compared imaging results from 15,633 women who underwent tomosynthesis at HUP beginning in 2011 to those of 10,753 patients imaged with digital mammography the prior year. Six radiologists trained in tomosynthesis interpretation reviewed the images.

Researchers found that, compared to conventional mammography, the average recall rate using tomosynthesis decreased from 10.40 percent to 8.78 percent, and the cancer detection rate increased from 4.28 to 5.24 per 1,000 patients, a 22 percent increase.

“Our study showed that we reduced our callback rate and increased our cancer detection rate,” said Dr. Conant, the study’s lead author. “The degree to which these rates were affected varied by radiologist. But importantly, the ratio of callback to cancer detection rate improved significantly for our radiologists.”

The overall positive predictive value—the proportion of positive screening mammograms from which cancer was diagnosed—increased from 4.1 percent to 6.0 percent with tomosynthnesis, a 46% increase.

Since October 2011, all screening mammograms at Penn Medicine now include tomosynthesis, according to Dr. Conant.

“It’s the most exciting improvement to mammography that I have seen in my career, even more important than the conversion from film-screen mammography to digital mammography,” she said. “The coming years will be very exciting, as we see further improvements in this innovative technology.”

Click here to read the original article.

The post 3-D Mammography Increases Cancer Detection appeared first on Healthcare IT Systems.

Max discusses lessons learned while changing PACS vendors.

Since this presentation was based on Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, there will be some UK specific terms in the presentation.

Read Avoiding PACS Migration Pitfalls

The post Avoid PACS Migration Pitfalls appeared first on Healthcare IT Systems.

The modification is a fixed-price with economic-price-adjustment contract for $528,376,639 for Digital Imaging Network-Picture Archive Communications System.

Location of performance is South Carolina with a March 7, 2015 performance completion date.  Using military services are Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and federal civilian agencies.  Type of appropriation is fiscal 2013 through fiscal 2015 Defense Working Capital funds.  The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pa.

You can read the rest of the awarded contracts by clicking here.

The post A Half Billion Dollars in PACS…Really? appeared first on Healthcare IT Systems.