A low cost DICOM review station for cardiac surgery

A low-cost PC based DICOM multi modality review station for cardiac surgery has been developed for use during minimally invasive Coronary Surgery. This system is a Windows 95 networked PC for review of DICOM coronary catheterization, ultrasound and MRI cine's stored at a departmental image server. For fast review a specific one-heartbeat sequence out of a coronary catheterization selected by an application departmental image server. The Ultrasound studies, acquired by Vingmed System 5 and stored in an Echopac archive, are exported as DICOM files to the same server. The MRI studies are pushed as DICOM messages from an Agfa Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) to this image file server and automatically converted to DICOM file format. The RuboMed v 1.00 DICOM PC DICOM viewer is used to review the multi-modal cine's and the patient data. The review station does not require expensive hardware and software to provide for easy, direct and transparent review of multi-modal DICOM cines stored at a central departmental image file server.