DICOM import modules

RDSR module

Ultimately this should be the only module required as it deals with all Radiation Dose Structured Reports. This is used for CT, fluoroscopy, mammography and digital radiography.

Mammography module

Mammography is interesting in that all the information required for dose audit is contained in the image header, including patient ‘size’, ie thickness. However the disadvantage over an RSDR is the requirement to process each individual image rather than a single report for the study, which would also capture any rejected images.

CR and DR module

In practice this is only useful for DR modalities, but most of them use the CR IOD instead of the DX one, so both are catered for. This module makes use of the image headers much like the mammography module.

CT non-standard modules

Philips CT dose info reports

These have all the information that could be derived from the images also held in the DICOM header information, making harvesting relatively easy. Used where RDSR is not available from older Philips systems.

Toshiba dose summary and images

OpenREM can harvest information from older Toshiba CT systems that create dose summary images but cannot create RDSR objects by using a combination of tools to create an RDSR that can then be imported in the normal manner. This extractor requires that the Offis DICOM toolkit, java.exe and pixelmed.jar are available to the system.