Teleradiology includes the processes of creating and transfering the appointment and job lists to the modalities installed at the Radiology Center, receiving the images in DICOM format from the modalities and storing these images, transmitting them to the reporting center to be installed at a different location and writing diagnosis/reports by specialist radiologist herein and reforwarding these diagnosis/reports to the system installed at the Radiology Center.
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Teleradiology is the digital transmission of radiology images from a point to another point between computers via internet or other connections. By this way, any radiology image took far away, even in another continent can be evaluated and reported by a radiologist thousands of kilometers away within seconds. Teleradiology is a measurable solutions for remote diagnosis and reporting. The technology behind the teleradiology is the communication between the radiologist and the past even there is a distance of thousands of kilometers between them. The images created by the different imaging devices are transferred to the environment where a radiologist from the radiology department in another location writes comments.The reporting is carried out by the specialist radiologists. When the reports are completed (written and inspected), these reports are sent to the radiology center in order the patients to receive their reports. All of these transfer processes are carried out in a reliable communication environment, and supported by the displaying of web interfaces by the users in accordance with the specified rules and authorizations.
The Radiology Center is a place where the modalities are, the necessary appointment and work lists are planned, the x-ray films are taken and stored, and the reports related to such films are authorized and sent to the reporting center. Pacs Server This defines the hardware and software necessary for indexing and storing the images in the center, protecting the modifications to be made on the images, and accesing to and reviewing them. It supports the Client/Server technology as the operation in the Radiology Center. All work stations can display and access to all information according to their authorizations. It provides the opportunity of web-based image distribution without need for a pre-installation in the center. It supports HL7 and DICOM 3.0 that are international standards, and has the IHE compatibility. The server system consists of the Radiology Information System software, PACS database and archive management system, and teleradiology image distribution software servers. The database and operating system discs shall be in the RAID-1 mirror security level. The image discs shall be in the RAID-5 security level. The servers shall work in the clustering architecture and with the active/active principle. Any data or image sent from the PACS server to be archived shall be concurrently stored in both units. In the case of any trouble in either unit, the standby system shall be automatically enabled. Communication Server ( WebServer ) The communication server ensures the users of Reporting Center to access to the images in the Radiology Center in a safe and authorized manner. Thus, the radiologists in the center will access to the images and have the opportunity to simultaneously perform synchronous actions on any image, and also the opportunity of two mouse cursors and live voice (computer or free speech, phone). It will also provide a platform that will provide access to the images in the Radiology Center from outside the Radiology Center for research purposes, and opportunity of second opinion and consultation. The center of use rights of users is controlled by a central authorization system. It supports the rapid data compression (with a special compression algorithm that supports JPEG 2000), pre-compression or online compression processes for rapid access to the images. It can upload data related to the images of outside patients to the system (as a file or using DICOM C-Store). It supports many formats such as DICOM, PDF and Word. It makes all logging processes for the situation monitoring during the data transfer and supports the backing up. It provides the opportunity to conduct teleconferencing via LAN or WAN. It ensures lossless data transmission between PACS, RIS and teleradiology. On-line Application Software It is the software through which the patients can get pre-appointments on the basis of Center and device. The patients will access the information of possible appointment hours for the devices, and enter the necessary data to the relevant slots for the pre-appointment registration. Radiology Information System RIS can send the work lists to all modalities under PACS with the DICOM 3.0 Worklist support withinthe scope of DICOM 3.0 Worklist standard. RBS ensures the PACS integration in accordance with the HL7 (Health Level 7) standards. It can perform the automatic or manual patient planning. In RBS, the examination planning can be performed near the patients’ demographical data. Appointments can be made on the basis of date-hour, doctor name or device, or cancelled, and if required, special appointments can be made without a specific hour in case of emergency. The result and phase of the appointments made can be followed by the authorized users using the reports in the system. The modalities can be reserved for specific periods of time, specific units or special applications with the consent of Radiology department. The urgent requests out of the working hours can be automatically entered in the work lists of the devices predetermined as serviceable related to the specific period of time in RBS. DICOM 3.0 work lists to be sent from the patient records to the modalities are automatically created and sent to all examination devices compatible with DICOM 3.0 work list through the system. The work lists entered to the modalities contain all patients who have appointment for that day; the patients whose processes are completed and who are ready for examinations are separately highlighted. Various statistical data for the incoming patients are recorded (arrival time, waiting time, examination time, etc.), and the warning notes can be added and changed for varios cases (emergency, pregnant, intensive care, etc.) The information such as the medical warnings and request reason are stored. Various statistical data (number of patients examined in a day, month or year, number of patients who took appointment, number of patients who did not come to the appointment, number of repeated examinations, sorting by the diagnosis codes, etc. according to the modalities and each device) can be reported on a weekly, monthly, yearly, etc. basis. Patient Follow-up Software This is the software through which the appointments made for the future are followed up, the coming of patients can be queried, the result reports written for the patients can be collectively accessed and followed up. Personal Health Record Software It is the software through which the patients can access to their results and images and query their results without going to the center and share them with the other doctors via internet. Reporting Center It is the center in which the images from the Radiology Center are examined by the radiology specialists, diagnosed and their reports are made, and such reports are sent to the Radiology Center. Radiology Reporting Teleradiology Work Station Software This software can take and display the images from the system and archive. The work stations shall have the feature of freeze frame/standby, and thus the users can standby the images they are working on if they need to have a break in the intermediate examination. All settings valid for that moment for the image examined are kept. After the users perform the other display processes on the work station, they will have the opportunity to continue the interpret the image and access to the image in freeze/standby as it was before. There is an easy query interface for the patient list. There is the feature of query and image download from the archive in the patient level. The image taking and sending processes are performed on the system in the DICOM 3.0 format using the lossless image compression methods. It has a work check list and the feature of adding the working status information to the images. It has the feature of defining the user name and password with various rights of use for each user. Reporting Software It is the application software through which the radiology specialists make and store their reports related to the images using the teleradiology work stations. It is a software which is one-to-one integrated with Reporting RBS-PACS. The flexible work lists can be followed up such as the unreported studies, studies waiting for report, studies that need to be repeated, repeated studies, dictated studies, completed studies with reports made, and studies waiting for consultation. It incorporates the support of report adding with write protection for the approved reports. The radiology reports can be prepared via templates predefined by the medical experts. It is possible to define new templates. the codes such as diagnosis, procedure and result codes to be used in the reports can be selected from the lists and menus. Products
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