title: The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) archive is a dynamic component of a clinician image-related workflow solution.
abstract: The authors investigated clinician transactions against the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) archive within a clinical image management system (CIMS) in support of patient care. A Neurosurgical Oncology practice was audited for image utilization. There were 400 requests for 233 image studies during 297 sessions. Fifty percent were for current studies, and 50% were for historical studies. Current studies alone were requested in 37% of the sessions, current plus historical in 31%, and historical alone in 32% of the sessions. Seventy percent of studies were within 8 weeks old and were rapidly available from the CIMS disk cache without an archive image transaction. Conversely, 30% were older than 8 weeks, requiring a clinician transaction against the archive for image retrieval. Approximately 25% of studies were older than 3 months and 10% older than 6 months. Clinician image needs are complex and any CIMS solution must include a DICOM archive that can support clinician-based transactions.
authors.affiliation: Division of Neurosurgery, University of Alabama School of Medicine, Birmingham 35294, USA. bguthrie@uabmc.edu
authors.forename: B L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Guthrie
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Price
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zaleski
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Backensto
mesh_terms: D003628:Database Management Systems; D006801:Humans; D009493:Neurosurgery; D011873:Radiology Information Systems