The following sections describe how to configure and use the LEADTOOLS Medical Workstation Viewer:

Configuration

LEADTOOLS Medical Workstation Viewer Database Configuration Wizard

1. Start the Database Configuration Wizard, and click the 'Next' button.

   

2. Choose the "Create a new database" option if configuring a LEADTOOLS Medical Workstation Viewer for the first time. If you have already configured a medical workstation, you can choose the second option to connect to an existing database.

   

3. Enter a name for the new database connection. This can be any name that you choose (example: LEADworkstation_db). After entering a database connection name, click the "Next" button.

   

4. You can connect to Microsoft SQL CE, or click the 'Change' button to choose a different data source. Next, click the 'Browse' button to choose a folder location to store the database file. When you are finished, click the 'Next' button.

   

5. Enter a user name and password, which will be used to create a LEADTOOLS Medical Workstation Viewer administrator account. When starting the LEADTOOLS Medical Workstation Viewer, you will be prompted to enter this user name and password.

   

6. Choose a folder location where the LEADTOOLS Medical Workstation Viewer images will be stored, and click the 'Next' button.

   

7. After finishing the Database Configuration utility, you will be able to run the LEADTOOLS Medical Workstation Viewer.

   

Perform a Query/Retrieve images operation from local database and remote DICOM servers and view them in the Viewer control

1. Start the LEADTOOLS Medical Workstation Viewer. For the user name and password, use what you entered in the database configuration wizard.

   

2. The "Search" Control will be initially displayed as the default view.

3. The search control will let you specify query parameters to search for the available DICOM Studies/Series and view the images.

4. On the right side of the Search control above the Search button you can select whether you want to perform the query against a local database or a configured DICOM Server (source).

   

5. Notice that on the initial run of the LEADTOOLS Medical Workstation Viewer, there will not be any information in the local database and you can't select the "PACS Server" button because you haven't configured any DICOM Server.

6. To configure a DICOM Server to search images from Click on the "Configuration" button located in the bottom toolbar.

   

7. This will show the Configuration control of the workstation. The initial view contains configuration information for the workstation client. Click on the "Remote PACS" button in the upper toolbar to display the PACS configuration.

   

8. Click on the "+ Add AE Title" button.

   

9. Enter the information for the DICOM Server you want to perform a query/retrieve operation. You can enter information for more than one DICOM Server. You can enter the High level PACS LEAD_SERVER information or the low level DICOM server installed with the toolkit. Note that there is an option for "Default Storage". This is for performing a store operation from local database to that server. Enter one or more DICOM Servers in this list.

   

10. To configure the DICOM Server with the workstation client information (Add a client into the DICOM Server demos) click on the Workstation Client Button and use the displayed workstation client information.

    

11. For example, if you start the PACS Server Manager demo (CSLeadtools.Dicom.Server.Manager.exe), this is where the workstation client information would be added to the LEAD_SERVER DICOM service.

    

12. Now return back to the Search Control and notice that you can check the "PACS Server" option and select the DICOM servers entered previously.

    

13. Click on the "Search" button to query the studies and series information on that server.

14. You can view all the series images from a study by right clicking on the study and select "Add all series to the Queue Manager" or right click on the specified (or double click) series and select "Add series to the Queue Manager".

    

15. When you add a series to the "Queue Manager" the Queue Manager dialog will open and show you the progress of the Move operation.

16. You can configure the "Queue Manager" to load the retrieved images directly into the Viewer control. Also you have the option to auto clear the task from the list when an image is retrieved successfully.

    

17. Note that any retrieved images will be automatically stored into the workstation database and now you can make a search and view them by selecting the "Local Database" from the Search control.

18. Click on the Viewer button from the below toolbar. You can see the retrieved images.

    

19. You can add new users into the workstation by clicking the "User Accounts" button from the bottom toolbar. Users can be either administrators or non- administrators. A non- administrator has not access to the Workstation Configuration or the Service Manager.

    

20. To directly add images into the database click on the "Service Manager" button from the toolbar on the bottom.

    

21. Click on the "Database Manager" button on the top toolbar.

    

22. Use this to perform the following from the toolbar in the top:

    • Add DICOM file
    • Add complete DICOM Directory
    • Delete selected entries from the results grid view
    • Clear the entire database
    • View the status report
    

23. You can perform a search just as in the "Search" control.

24. After adding some images, close the Database Manager and return back to the "Search" Control.

    

25. Select the "Local Database" option from the "Source" box and click search.

    

26. You can directly view a complete study's series or a specific study by right click on the Study/Series and select "Add study to viewer" or "Open in viewer".

27. When you select "add series/study to viewer" the images will be loaded in the viewer but you will remain the in search control. If you select open in viewer you will be navigated to the Viewer control.

Storing images into remote DICOM Servers

1. After inserting images into the Workstation database you can store them into other DICOM Servers.
2. Start the LEADTOOLS Medical Workstation Viewer.
3. Make sure you have configured a DICOM Server in the PACS Configuration control. (see steps #7-#9)
4. Make sure you have configured the DICOM Server to allow store requests from the workstation client. (As in #10 above)
5. From the Search control select the "Local Database" source option and click the search button.
6. Select any study/series from the results view and right click on it.
7. You should find an option to store the study/series into the configured DICOM Servers.

8. Select the default DICOM Server or chose one from the context menu list.

   

9. The Store operation will be added into the Queue Manager to show the operation status.

Using the Workstation Listener Service

1. The workstation listener service is used by DICOM clients to communicate with the workstation (Query/Retrieve and store DICOM).
2. Open the LEADTOOLS Medical Workstation Viewer.

3. Click on the "Service Manager" button from the toolbar in the bottom.

   

4. Make sure that the LTSTATION_SERVER is running. If is running, the Start Server button will be grayed out.

   

5. Configure the CSDicomHighlevelClientDemo.exe client demo to connect to the LTSTATION_SERVER. In the diagram below, the CSDicomHighlevelClientDemo.exe is on the right, and the LEADTOOLS Medical Workstation Viewer is on the left.

   

6. Close the "Options" dialog of the CSDicomHighlevelClientDemo.exe, and click the Search button to query the LEADTOOLS Medical Workstation Viewer.

   

7. Start the CSDicomHighlevelStoreDemo.exe, and configure it to connect to the LTSTATION_SERVER as you did with the CSDicomHighlevelClientDemo.exe in step 5. Then click the "Store" button to store images to the LEADTOOLS Medical Workstation Viewer.

   

8. Make a search in the workstation Search control to make sure that the images has been successfully stored.

Workstation Client Configuration overview

This is a description about the options of the workstation configuration.

1. DICOM Client group Contains information about the workstation client which will connect to remote DICOM servers to query/retrieve and store images.

2. Debug Mode Allow you to run the workstation in debug mode. Checkbox options allow you to display detailed debug messages, and generate a log file for DICOM communication.
3. Viewer Lazy Loading When this is enabled, the viewer control will not load the series images into memory but will load them only when they need to be displayed on the screen. This should make the initial image display faster and will not take much of the memory. However, the Cine playing speed might be slower than when all images are loaded. To overcome the cine speed you can specify how many hidden sequential images will be loaded in addition to the displayed images.
4. Compression group Allows you to specify whether to use compression when performing a store operation into other DICOM Servers.
5. DICOM Retrieve group If this is disabled, when retrieving images from DICOM Servers and one or more image is already found in the workstation local database then the retrieve operation will fail. When this is enabled, the workstation will continue retrieving the rest of images even if they do exist in the local database.

Reference