The client is a diversified technology company with primary divisions focused in the areas of healthcare, consumer lifestyle and lighting. It is one of the largest electronics companies in the world and employs over 100,000 people across more than 60 countries.
To resolve a customer-facing problem in managing memory for a client viewer, the client test needed data to be loaded into a vendor’s Picture Archive Communication System (PACS) using actual DICOM images of a given modality, size and slice count.
The main issues included the updating and processing of the images. The coordination and running of software across each file on disk and updating the header takes days to correctly update one terabyte of DICOM images for multiple studies and patients, along with correctly edited HL7 for each. The datasets had to enter the PACS using C-STORE and consolidated by the system with required orders.
Qualitest proposed using their Virtual Radiology Environment (VRE), a simulation system that combines a comprehensive multi-modality/multi-vendor radiology dataset to assure quality and interoperability while simplifying and dramatically speeding-up all aspects of V&V testing. Qualitest proved their VRE system’s capabilities to the client by performing a free-of-charge Proof of Concept, demonstrating the benefits that the client could contrive from Qualitest’s tools and services.
VRE accomplished the issues of updating and processing images automatically by using a proprietary rules engine internally to update all of the header data without loading the full image data into memory. This saved system resources and time on the VRE server while realistically simulating a live Radiology Department.
After the data was converted into the proprietary format, the issue was fully reproducible. The real-world execution of the VRE System allowed this vendor to reproduce the issue in-house without delays and provide a patch to the impacted customer faster than previously possible.
