With the advance of digitalization

With the advance of digitalization in radiology departments, the interchange of data between institutions is shifting toward shipment of CD-ROMs instead of the actual films. Although this is a positive change in terms of costs, it also has its disadvantages. One of the main problems is how to integrate these CD-ROMs into the normal workflow. Although most CD-ROMs are equipped with a dedicated viewer, these viewers are different per vendor and thus, users have to learn to operate many different software packages. Some of the software packages also require installation on the local work station, which is not always possible for security reasons. To solve these problems, we included the study data from the CD-ROMs into the normal hospital workflow.1,2 To achieve this, all DICOM (digital imaging and communication in medicine) files from the CD-ROM are read, the DICOM header is changed (reconciliated) to comply with the patient ID and accession number used in our institution, and the data are either stored into the PACS (picture archiving and communication system) or the web server. Only second opinion cases are stored into the PACS; all other data are stored on the web server and will be removed after 2 years.

After this methodology has been used for 1 year in our department, a questionnaire was distributed among the users for evaluation of the procedure.