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Registration
Security
System Requirements and Troubleshooting
Web PACS Functionality
Q: What is the cost of your Web PACS service?
A: Our Web PACS service is free, and
we are determined to keep it this way. In return, we would really
appreciate your feedback and collaboration, which would let us enhance
our system even more. We are also interested in financial help and
business cooperation, provided it does not change the free access
to our online system. With any comments and proposals, please contact
us at opiany@gmail.com.
Q: Can I see a demo of your system first?
A: Yes. Click here to access
our Web PACS with demo archive. Please note that you will be unable
to upload DICOM files to our server with the demo access: you’ll
have to create your own free account
to do that.
Q: How do I start using your Web PACS?
A: All you need to do is fill out our online registration
form to set up your free account. After that, you will have
the access to the Web PACS service. When registering, please provide
us with your valid email address – this is the only way we
can keep in touch with you. You do not need to register if you do
not plan to keep any of your data with us.
Q: Why are you free?? - i.e., What do you want?
A: Free - Don't you like it? :o).
Seriously though, keeping this system free is not a cheap sales
pitch, but rather a conceptual goal. Digital medicine has been locked
between pricey products, artificial regulations, proprietary DICOM
tweaking and limited LAN architectures for too long. Our resources
might be limited, but we want to make a difference
If you want to support us financially, you can always make a donation
here.
Q: Is your system secure?
A: Yes. In fact, it is much more secure than online shopping and
the other similar systems. Your data is binary encrypted from the
moment you enter it in our system, and it cannot be accessed without
your logon id and password. It is kept on a secure and dedicated
server. You may delete your records at any time, completely removing
them from our system. Finally, being a digital medicine storage
provider, we do not access your data and certainly do not disclose
it to any third parties. In fact, we are not even interested in
your data content.
We also do not disclose the information you provide during the registration
process (your email, etc.), and use it only internally, when it
is necessary.
Q: How do you ensure the privacy of my medical data?
A: We use our own Java-based protocol for transmission of your data
(that is why you do not see "https" in our URL). All of
your personal data is stored on our server in encrypted format.
No other users can access your images unless you explicitly grant
access to them.
If you do not find this sufficient, we invite you to use our DICOM
Anonymizer, which will remove any private data from your DICOM
files even before you upload them to our server.
Q: What about HIPAA?
A: To comply with HIPAA requirements, Web PACS keeps a detailed
log file for all data transactions. In this sense, we are not different
from any other PACS, and exchanging images with us is by no means
less secure or more error-prone than exchanging them with any other
digital archive, including the one at your institution.
Q: What configuration should my computer have to work with your
Web PACS?
A: Compared to the other PACS, our system requirements were designed
to be very minimal. Your computer (with any current operating system)
should have at least 32MB of RAM, Internet connection, and a Web
browser such as Internet Explorer 4.0+, Netscape 4.7+, Opera 4.0+
or any other that supports Java 1.1+ and JavaScript.
If you are accessing the Internet via a firewall or a proxi server,
make sure it is not blocking our site.
Q: I open the Web PACS page, but all it shows is a blank rectangle
with no interface.
A: You have to enable Java in your browser (see your browser Help
documentation for details).
Q: The Web PACS page comes up, but when I try to open the worklist,
I get the "Cannot connect to the server" message.
A: This means that our Java applet on your computer cannot connect
to our server. That usually happens when you connect to the Internet
via firewall or proxy which is set to not allow direct Internet
connections. Contact your system administrator to resolve this problem:
this is a pure configuration issue on your side.
Q: I can view my images, but they appear somewhat distorted.
A: First of all, open your worklist window, switch compression level
to “Minimal”, and reload the image(s). Also make sure
your desktop color depth is set to 32-bit. If the problem persists,
it is probably due to some incorrect DICOM representation of your
data. In this case, we would like to have your permission to look
at your "problem" images to find out what could have caused
the problem. If you grant us this permission, we will use an internal,
temporary copy of your image to resolve the problem; after the problem
is solved, we will destroy this copy. At any stage of this process,
we will not diminish the security of your account and data. You
are welcome to use our free DICOM Anonymizer
before you submit your problem files to us, to remove any private
information from them.
Q: What operations can I perform with Web PACS?
A: You can upload your DICOM images to our server database, browse
them from your patient worklist, and use the most common PACS image
viewing tools (such as window/level, zoom/pan, measurements, rectangular
ROI or cine).
You can comment on different studies (“Notes” button),
and share those comments with the other people, which is ideal for
clinical collaboration.
Q: How do I upload images to Web PACS?
A: In the Web PACS main window, click "upload data" link,
or simply scroll the page down. There, click on the “Browse”
button and select the local file you want to upload. After that,
you may also enter optional patient comments in the space specified
– they will be stored in the database, available via the “Notes”
button. Finally, click the "Upload Patient Data" button
to upload. When the upload is finished, you can access this data
from the worklist.
Q: What types of images can I store at Web PACS?
A: The images that you upload and view in Web PACS must be valid
DICOM 3.0 files. Invalid images will be ignored and not added to
your worklist. Currently, we do not support color images, and they
will be converted to grayscale.
At this time, we do not support any pseudo-DICOM proprietary image
formats, and we do not plan to. We believe that the other PACS providers
should take more care of correct DICOM support, which is the only
way to make digital medicine truly universal.
Q: Can I download the images from Web PACS?
A: No. We intentionally disabled this feature for security reasons.
Q: Do you use lossy image compression?
A: We leave it up to you: "Minimum", "Medium"
and "Maximum" compression options on the worklist are
lossy. They are intended for the low bandwidth networks, and should
not introduce any visible artifacts into the images. Minimum compression
ratio is about 2:1, Medium is about 4:1, and Maximum is about 10:1.
"Exact colors" option is absolutely lossless and makes
no changes in the original image data.
In any event, the images are stored in our system unaltered, with
no compression whatsoever. The lossy (Medium and Maximum) compression
is used only to display your data on the Web faster with a slow
network connection. It does not change the original files that you
have uploaded to us.
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