Enriching the Medical Student Radiology Clerkship: Simulating the Radiologist’s Experience

Background Current radiology training in medical schools is still predominantly limited to passively observing the radiologist at the workstation and through lectures, textbooks and online sources. Evaluation is also mainly limited on still image interpretation or knowledge-based multiple-choice questions. Furthermore, students may have specific interests based on their choice of residency. In order to create a tailored and active learning experience, and to evaluate students’ ability in image interpretation, we utilized an open-source web-based Picture archiving and communication system (PACS) named Weasis and integrated a report system. Method We establish a new PACS teaching system by utilizing the open-source PACS system “dcm4chee” and integrating Weasis as imaging viewing browser, MySQL as database and JBOSS as application server. The developmental environment is MyEclipse, developmental language is JAVA. We use WADO (Web Access to Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) Object) to achieve web-client DICOM images access. Java applets are used via a browser to serve as a DICOM viewer without special software required, and all functions (window width and level, zoom, measurement, etc.) are provided as controls within the server application. Thus we built a reporting system using the same method for student reporting and preceptor commenting and grading. Following the establishing and implementation of a reporting system using the same way as a plug-in, students can write up very brief reports in the form of impression points. Result Attending radiologists can send desired anonymized studies from hospital PACS during read-out to a shared secure server on the hospital network. Cases can then be immediately accessed by trainees on any computer in the hospital. Students, even simultaneously, can simulate being a radiologist and independently formulate an opinion and write up a brief report, without the need for occupying an expensive PACS workstation. The cases can be categorized into different subspecialties, difficulty levels, and imaging modalities. In addition, this can be also used for examination purposes, both for radiology rotation evaluation of medical students and as part of the pre-call Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) of first year residents. Conclusion By implementing Weasis and add-on reporting system, a real-time, easy-access, sophisticated Image Database can be established. for learning, didactic and evaluation purposes. Teaching cases can easily accumulate, thus to provide a new opportunity for both versatile training and evaluation purposes for radiology programs

formal modeling for magnetic resonance images tamper mitigation

Abstract The picture archiving and communication system is a medical imaging technology used primarily in healthcare organizations to store and digitally transmit electronic images and clinically-relevant reports. As demonstrated, these systems can be exploited by malicious users: in fact, considering that medical images are not digitally encrypted, any medical image modifications would be difficult to detect for a radiologist. To mitigate this aspect, in this paper a formal modelisation for picture archiving and communication system systems is proposed. The main aim is to avoid illegal writing and reading from components that should not do it, by representing the system components in terms of automa

Padimedical: Medical Image Sharing Portal with DICOM Viewer – User Experience

Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) is a standard medical imaging format for medical imaging information and data. Availability to access DICOM files remotely using smartphones has shown to improve healthcare systems especially for communication between doctors fromdifferent centres. Most of DICOM files need to be viewed using conventional institutional DICOM viewer. We developed software which allows medical personnel to access DICOM images remotely from their smartphone. This newly created software platform is named Padimedical. This pilot study aims to evaluate users’ satisfaction and usability. Practising medical doctors from a radiology department in a tertiary referral centre were chosen as correspondents in this study. The survey form was sent to over 30 doctors via email. A total of 24 out of 30 respondents completed the survey. The survey showed that Padimedical DICOM viewer was easily accessible (100%), compatible with OS operating system (100%), user-friendly (87.1%), and high signal to noise ratio (100%). All respondents (100%) agreed that the image viewing was smooth and responsive. All respondents would recommend to their peers (n=24). A total of 18 respondents suggested that the quality of images was high (76%) and 23 respondents suggested that the contents in this newly created platform were easy to share (96.15%). All the participants were able to make the correct diagnosis using Padimedical. Overall, the rating of our platform is 4.3 out of 5. Conclusion: Based on this pilot survey, Padimedical software was easily accessible remotely using smartphones, compatible with OS operating system, viewing images were smooth and responsive, produce high-quality image, and easy to share DICOM contents.Keywords—DICOM, images, software

Surgical Data Science - from Concepts toward Clinical Translation

Recent developments in data science in general and machine learning in particular have transformed the way experts envision the future of surgery. Surgical Data Science (SDS) is a new research field that aims to improve the quality of interventional healthcare through the capture, organization, analysis and modeling of data. While an increasing number of data-driven approaches and clinical applications have been studied in the fields of radiological and clinical data science, translational success stories are still lacking in surgery. In this publication, we shed light on the underlying reasons and provide a roadmap for future advances in the field. Based on an international workshop involving leading researchers in the field of SDS, we review current practice, key achievements and initiatives as well as available standards and tools for a number of topics relevant to the field, namely (1) infrastructure for data acquisition, storage and access in the presence of regulatory constraints, (2) data annotation and sharing and (3) data analytics. We further complement this technical perspective with (4) a review of currently available SDS products and the translational progress from academia and (5) a roadmap for faster clinical translation and exploitation of the full potential of SDS, based on an international multi-round Delphi process