Image Viewer > Working with Studies > Searching for Studies

When querying the local store (My Studies) or an external DICOM server (My Servers), it is usually necessary to specify search criteria in order to narrow down the results. The following fields are available on the DICOM Explorer:

•

Name

Searches in the patient's name field. Enter as much of the patient's name as is known; for example, his/her entire last name. The search uses wildcards by adding an * to the beginning and end of the text you entered and will find all patients whose name contains the text anywhere in their full name.

•	Patient ID

•	Accession #

•	Study Description

o	Enter the first n characters of the value to search for. The search uses wildcards for these fields by appending an * automatically.

•	Study Date (From ó To)

o	Enter a value for either or both of the From and To fields. The date range must be valid.

o	When neither field is populated, all dates are a match. Unspecified dates are also a match.

o	When the To field is empty, all dates after the From date (inclusive) are a match.

o	When the From field is empty, all dates before the To date (inclusive) are a match. Unspecified dates are also a match.

•	Referring Physician

o	Searches in the referring physician's name. Wildcards are applied in a similar fashion as the Name field.

•

Modality

o	From the drop-list, select only those modalities you are interested in. Studies containing at least one series that is an exact match for any of the specified modalities is considered a match.

o	When no modalities are specified to search on, all modalities are considered a match.

Click Search to query for studies that match the criteria you have entered.

Technical Note

Those already familiar with earlier versions of the Workstation will notice that there is now only a single Name field. This is to simplify name searching so that you can search on any part of the patient's name, refining your search as needed. To search explicitly by last and first name, enter the text as LAST NAME, FIRST NAME providing as many characters as you need to find the correct person. For example, entering SMI, JO will search the same way the Workstation previously did, finding all patients whose last name starts with SMI and whose first name starts with JO. However, it is unlikely you will ever need to use the name search in this way.

There are a number of reasons for simplifying the name search, some of which are:

1.	In DICOM, names are supposed to be delimited with a ^ character, but there is an abundance of poorly formatted DICOM data out there. This makes searching by last and first name more difficult than it should be.

2.	Makes searching non-English DICOM names much simpler, since there can actually be up to 3 full names, delimited by an = sign.

3.	A user would normally search by Patient ID or Accession # when trying to find a particular patient, unless they are unknown. In this situation, when little is known about the patient (except, perhaps, parts of his/her name), "more is better".