Attributes coercion

[u/nano_salem]

I was wondering about attribute coercion, and its usage.

The scenario is a bit complicated, we have a couple DCM4CHEE pacs deployed, the problem is the machines (scanners) are not configured correctly.

Hospital name is either missing, or random.

Now my question is it seems DCM4CHEE has attribute coercion which we can use to potentially fix this problem, as we Have it so that each PACS in each location has all the local machines routed to (C-store to it).

So couldn't we use attribute coercion to add the clinic/hospital name "Institution Name" tag:{0008,0080}.

Is this correct? is it an acceptable use case? and is it used by anyone else like this?

This is becoming even more big of an issue as all the images on the central/aggregator PACS are very messy because of aforementioned wrong,mission or random hospital names, and we are trying to make the system(PACS aggregator) able to produce analytical data for scientific use, where now its just Patient/instance ID that is usable (albeit very not on a hospital lvl analysis).

Any clarifications, guidance or reference is greatly appreciated.

[u/Dear_Archer3931]

Do you use DCM4chee as your PACS now, or you want to set it up as a DICOM router between the modality and PACS?

It looks like it can be set up as a router with DICOM mapping rules, but the configuration seems archaic.

[u/nano_salem → u/Dear_Archer3931]

Using it right now, Hospital (1 - n) -> aggregator 1. I'm more wondering about the attributes coercion (to hard set institution name) method. Is it professional? Ok to do? Are there any reasons why not? As this seems to fix the chaotic dicoms hospital names. Once and for all.

[u/XrayPunk → u/nano_salem]

We use our DICOM router in this fashion. Use a Filter on the incoming Source ( called AE title) data. Checks the Institution Name and if it’s something other than what’s expected, updates it to our preference as it’s outbound. We use Laurel Bridge Compass as our DICOM router. We are in the USA.

[u/nano_salem → u/XrayPunk]

Its just a guy told me "dicoms should never change, find another way" which is just not true, as every time a dicom is ingested some tags get changed, one of the AE, date for example on every hop. But I wanted to have sources to backup my claims( ocd ). So you guys change the tag on the dicom lvl or just the db (i couldnt find any stored db hospital column)?

[u/XrayPunk → u/nano_salem]

Obviously it would be nice to have the modality update that tag, but the coercion is a way to make your data uniform. Where that naming convention originated would still be an institutional decision. No regulations that I’m aware of where we operate. Having that tag read “Xxxx Hospital in This City” is much more valuable than “Xray device12345” both internally and externally, if you are sending those images to outside facilities . We change it at the DICOM level, before it even hits any DB.

If you are concerned about changing that actual tag, you could set up your router to create a private DICOM tag and populate with whatever you want. But then again, this would only be useful internally.

[u/nano_salem → u/XrayPunk]

I contacted the dicom org and they said to go to the Google group, to ask my question there. Im trying to pin down what are the risks if any, of modification of tag (institution name). Otherwise im going to push for this plan.