Image Viewer > Working with Studies

This is a premium feature and may not be available in all installations.

The Workstation supports the creation and viewing of DICOM Encapsulated PDF documents attached to a study.

The existence of one or more attachments is indicated in the study browser by the presence of an icon in the Attachments column.

Viewing Attachments

You can view the attachments associated with the study without opening the study in the viewer.

1.	Select a study that has attachments, as indicated by the presence of an icon in the Attachments column.

2.	Right-click on the selected study, and click View Attachments (alternatively, you may click the View Attachments button on the toolbar of the study browser).

3.	If the selected study has only one attachment, the attached document will immediately open in your default PDF document viewing application. If the study has multiple attachments, a dialog box opens to allow you to select which attachment you would like to view.

4.	To open the selected attachment, double click the item or click the View link in the right-most column.

Notes

•	If you do not have a default PDF viewer installed, the operating system will ask you to select a program with which you would like to open the document. There are a number of PDF viewers available for download free of charge, such as Adobe Reader.

•	Attachments can only be viewed for studies that exist in the local store or on a streaming server.

•	To view an attachment for a remote study on a non-streaming server, you must first retrieve the study to the local store and view the attachment from there.

Creating a New Attachment

To create a new attachment:

1.	Select the study to which you would like to attach a document.

2.	Right click on the selected study, and click Add Attachment (alternatively, you may click the Add Attachment button on the toolbar of the study browser). The Attach File dialog box appears.

3.	Select the file you wish to attach. Use the browse button beside the text box to open the file dialog and select the file. Note that only PDF files are supported.

4.	Enter a description for the attachment. This field is mandatory, as a study can have multiple attachments and the description is the only means available for you to distinguish between documents. Typical descriptions include “Report”, “Study Requisition”, “Lab Results”, etc.

5.	Preview the attachment by clicking the Preview File link near the bottom of the dialog box. By default, the application will automatically open the selected file for you. This behaviour can be disabled by unchecking the Automatically open for preview check box.

Important Note

•

For reasons of patient safety and confidentiality, it is strongly recommended that you preview each file prior to attaching it in order to ensure that the file you have selected is related to the patient. Although you can delete the newly created series from the study locally, it may have already been sent to the server from which the study was originally retrieved (see publishing configuration). When a mistake such as this is made, it is highly recommended that you contact your PACS administrator for assistance. See the Safety Instructions for more details.

6.	Press the Attach button to attach the document.

Notes

•	Attachments can only be created for studies that exist in the local store or on a streaming server.

•

To attach a document to a remote study on a non-streaming server, you must first retrieve the study to the local store, create the attachment there, then send the study back to the server (if your publishing configuration is set to automatically send back to the source server, your attachment will be automatically sent back to the server from which it was retrieved).

•	Depending on the manufacturer, it may take a few minutes for the attachment to be indexed on the server, however, you can confirm that the attachment was sent by checking the Activity Monitor, where there will be a "Publish Files" work item for the corresponding patient study.