PACS workstation respecification: display, data flow, system integration, and environmental issues, derived from analysis of the Conquest Hospital pre-DICOM PACS experience

This paper is based on 4 years of practical experience with a developmental pre- Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) picture archiving and communication system (PACS) plus analysis from the respecification study data for a DICOM/HTML PACS replacement. High-performance, but economic, workstations are required within PACS for radiologists to rapidly and accurately report images. For economic reasons such workstations should utilise standard landscape orientation monitors. They must have full Radiology Information System (RIS) integrated reporting functionality to optimise radiologists' work. The workstations must also be capable of displaying request data and both new and associated old images and image reports from multiple modalities. All images should be imported as "folders" according to semi-intelligent "knowledge table" based DICOM 3.0 standard Worklist control exerted by image management servers. This information can be obtained by relevant image lists and decision charts. A description of an optimal standard monitor workstation environment and related issues based on experience and literature review is given.