How to integrate a PACS server (DCM4CHE) with personal database

Question

Hi i am a newbie to programming. I have 100 or so CT scans stored on a PACS (dcm4che). I am trying to link all patients to a teaching file database (simple django application) which will have teaching points on each case. Can someone direct me to a tutorial or a brief direction to what sort of programming will integrate the two? i do realise the generic nature of the question. I have 20 days to work on this so am willing to start from scratch

Thanks

Answer 1

I would suggest to bind yiur django app or project to the appropriate dcm4chee databese. Since you have all priviliges just create a new table within dcm4chee database which has a simple foreign key column named SOPinstanceUid. In this column you just store the SOPinstanceUId of your preferred images. Then of course you can additionally provide all columns you need for your teaching problem.

You can of course also create a seperate database and bind your django app to both databases and use the SOPInstance uid also as main key to establish the relationship between dcm4chee db and teaching db.

Within your django app you can then of course manage your teaching table or db and query the filenames of the images which you have selected for teaching.The key of this relationship is the SOPInstanceUID of the dicom image.

This approach just needs some expertise in SQL, some knowledge of the preconfigured database and of course django and DICOM.

Answer 2

I would recommend against anything specific as diving into dcm4che. Instead if you would like to use standard API, you should use the QIDO-RS/WADO API provided by dcm4chee.

One of the main author did also document how to install such instance here