As part of a retrospective study you will need to provide us with a copy of Measurement data. This can be achieved by setting up Echo IQ Connect which ensure you are ready for realtime processing also.
Alternatively for one off exercises you can select one of the below options:
Sending the data to us.
You can send the data to us using a secure file transfer method of your choice, or we can provide an upload location to you. If sharing a link to us, use the email [email protected].
We do not recommend sending the actual measurement data as an email attachment as it may contain sensitive information.
1. Exporting via your PACS or Reporting Software User Interface
Most PACS solutions will allow you to export echo study data as either:
a DICOM export
Note: we only need the DICOM SR (structured report) data. This is the measurement data. We do not need the Image data, significantly reducing the amound of data you need to send us.
There may be an option to export via the PACS user interface (refer to your PACS support documentation). Importantly ensure when exporting the data ensure you export the "SR" (strucutred report) data.
CSV export of measurements
There may be an option to export measurement data via your PACS or Reporting Software user interface (refer to your softwares support documentation).
We can work with most CSV export file types. Just contact us for more information.
2. Extracting SR Measurements with DICOM
If your PACS or reporting solution does not have one of the options above, you can take the below steps to extract the measurement data.
Prerequisites
Identify the hostname (or IP address), port and AE Title of your PACS server. Hint: if you dont know this it should be configured in your Echo Cart settings.
On a windows machine, that is able to communicate with your PACS server (speak to your IT team if unsure). Download the DCMTK Tools and extract to a location on your machine e.g. c:\tools\dcmtk
Download and unzip our extract-sr helper script and copy it into the bin folder whereever you installed dcmtk e.g. c:\tools\dcmtk\bin\extract-sr.bat
Steps
Open a command pormpt and navigate to the bin folder whereever you installed dcmtk e.g.
cd c:\tools\dcmtk\bin\
Run our helper script
.\extract-sr.bat
You will be asked to provide the PAC server Hostname, Port and AE Title you collected earlier.
Finally you will be asked to provide an AE Title to make the query with. This is optional and only certain PACS servers require it. Try and leave it blank initially. If that doesnt work you will need to configure your PACS server to accept connections from an AETitle - setup the AETitle EIQEXTRACT for this purpose.
Having provided these inputs the tool will try to connect to your PACS server. If successful you will see a message like below:
"Testing connection to ORTHANC (127.0.0.1:4242) using the Calling AE Title MICRODICOM"
"Great we could connect, now we will determine what studies to extract."
Enter the date range Start-End of studies you want to collect the format YYYYMMDD-YYYYMMDD:
You will next be asked to provide the date range you wish to look up. Enter it in the format 20220915-20230915.
The tool will then attempt to retrieve all SR files on the PACS server within this date range for all Adult Echocardiography Procedure Reports.
If successful, your ouput should look something like this.
The SR Files will now be stored to the folder get-results which is located insider the bin folder where you installed DCMTK. Send these files to us.
3. Extracting SR files from your PACS server filesystem
Most PACS servers store the raw DICOM Image and SR files on the filesystem.
Prerequisites
Download and unzip our EIQ DICOM Tools onto a location on the server. (note this software is digitally signed by us)
Steps
Log in to your PACS server and identify the folder location where the PACS data is stored.
Open a command prompt and navigate to where you have extracted the EIQ DICOM Tools.
Run the following command:
eiq-dicom-tools.exe srextract <SOURCE_PATH> <TARGET_PATH> <FOLDER_FILTER> <FILE_FILTER> <RENAME>
Replacing the following values:
<SOURCE_PATH>: The location you would like to scan e.g. "c:\PACS\datastore"
<TARGET_PATH>: Set to the location you would like to copy the SR files to e.g. "c:\temp\sr-extract". NOTE: Do not use the same location where your PACS data is stored.
<FOLDER_FILTER>: Set to "." to check all subfolders, or specifiy a search term to narrow your search.
<FILE_FILTER>: Set to "." to check all files, or specifiy a search term to narrow your search.
<RENAME>: Set to "true".
Example 1 - Searching all subfolders and files of C:\DICOMFILES and saving the outputs to C:\SRFILES
eiq-dicom-tools.exe srextract "C:\DICOMFILES" "C:\SRFILES" "." "." "true"
Example 2 - Searching all subfolders that have the name 2012 and and files that contain the string SR in their filename under C:\DICOMFILES and saving the outputs to C:\SRFILES
eiq-dicom-tools.exe srextract "C:\DICOMFILES" "C:\SRFILES" "2012" "SR" "true"
4. Direct save from your Echo Machine
If you do not use a PACS you can configure your Echo Machine to save/export Structured Report data to an external hard drive or network folder. Refer your machine specific instructions for more information.
Once you have save the data to an external drive, you can use the steps above to isolate and send us the SR data.
5. Database extract
Our specialist team can work with Database exports from most systems. Please contact us for more information.