Seems odd that this has not been standard and integrated into OpenEMR yet but We need to integrate a PACS viewer in order to view DICOM images as follows:
1- Images are uploaded via OpenEMR tree under a folder of DICOM.
2- When clicked a viewer(preferably web-based) pops and views the image in a new tab in the browser.
3- The location of images should be somewhere else than the xampp folder so the backups dont get so big.This might be a PACS server so the path to server is important.
This seems easy so I came here to see if there’s someone who has already done this.
The problem with this integration is that any PACS viewer used for clinical diagnostic purposes must be FDA approved in the US.
I do not know the rules outside the US, but all of the FDA approved ones in the US come with a price. None of the free ones are FDA approved. The best solution is to have a ‘hyperlink’ inside OpenEMR that can open the PACS viewer of choice of the user. In this manner we give the user the choice of which PACS viewer to utilize.
Thats what we are currently using. But depending on a third party app it not what we want.
We are outside of US and the FDA approval is not needed. BTW,do you know any good paid PACS viewer which is web based so the package will remain web based and not dependent on a app installed on users computer?
Looks like Visolve had luck with radscaper. Any help from guys from Visolve? How to you get the applet installed and configured?
Osirix is FDA cleared according to their website but it only supports OS X. So this is a deal breaker in many cases. We need a web based solution to make the integration seamless.
We are trying to brainstorm with community and start the integration with the right tool so this can later be used in the main code base. Any past work or suggestions are welcomed.
FDA certification is required for diagnosis only. If your GP only wanted to view it for reference only then any would do. Even the PACS it’s self (depending on the use) may or may not require FDA certification and could even be a class 1 device or software.
Yes, we had used radscaper for viewing DICOM images. For the radscaper applet implementation, ensure to follow the below steps:
Download and extract radscaper into openemr folder
Create the applet index file into radscaper, and write the applet code to display the dicom images based on the argument.
Customize the OpenEMR Document section, such that, whenever a DICOM image is uploaded make that to link to radscaper applet code with required arguments like pid and file name.
To access the radscaper in browser, java plugin must be installed in the browser. Mozilla Firefox is highly recommended.
If there is any issue in radscaper, please check this radscaper link for troubleshooting.
It is not certified. But it does work. I got all the way up to asking the PACS machine for images. That is where I ran into the snag for GE equipment. They wanted $11k for the software to communicate with their machine out the network port.
Stephen,
It looks like a great middleware package. I would recommend anyone on this path to use that one instead of the bare bones code that I posted. It left a lot to be desired and was a good starting point but not a full package like the Orthanc