General DICOM PACS server for echocardiography images

This study tackles a PC based general DICOM server for storage of studies acquired at all commercially available echocardiography workstations currently in use at the University Hospitals in the Netherlands. This storage can be done by media or network. For transfer via the network the DICOM storage communication protocol is chosen to import DICOM image objects. Via media, DICOM and other formats can be imported. A software module provides for automatic conversion to DICOM part 10 file format. The images are copied to the central repository and the ancillary data, encoded as DICOM tags, are stored to a relational database. References to the images are also table items of the same database. After query and retrieve via SQL, review with a generic DICOM viewer is possible on a routine basis at any PC in the hospital.