Quality Control

A PACS environment is composed of several other entities aside from the PACS system itself. The PACS has to exchange information with modalities, other DICOM stations and DICOM printers to name but a few. Each one of these products has a different job to do and chances are that it was created by a different manufacturer. Even though standards exist for exchanging information, this exchange is not always perfect. As a result of manufacturer incompatibilities or operator error, problems will arise. Due to this reason, often times Quality Control work has to be performed before the patient data is ready for use.

The first section of the Quality Control topic deals with the removal of data from the system. The How Do I Delete a Patient? section provides instructions on how to completely remove a patient and all of the data associated with that patient from the system. The How Do I Delete a Study? section explains how to remove a specific study from the system. The How Do I Delete a Series of Images? section outlines how an individual series of images can be removed from the system.

When new study data arriving at the system conflicts with information already found in the database, it has to be temporarily altered in order to be stored. Such studies are marked as conflicts and need to be manually fixed by a QC user. The information on how conflicts occur and how they can be resolved is presented in the How Do I Manage Conflicts? topic.

The following topic in the Quality Control section deals with grouping studies that belong to one patient but have been assigned to separate patients. This can occur if patients change their name in between visits, or a simple typing error during data entry. Fixing this issue is documented in How Do I Merge Two Studies Under One Patient?