RZDCX Release 1.0.1.3

[update 24 March 2023: check HRZ website for the latest software versions - www.hrzkit.com]

The new release of RZDCX is now available on the download page of our web site.

Since the last release we've changed many things and improved the development process by using the latest tools and methodologies in order to monitor and manage the production environment ensuring that it's consistent, traceable and reproducible. Behind these big words hide even bigger words like extreme programming and continuous integration and these are backed up by great products like TeamCity for automatic building and unit testing facilities like NUnit and MSTest. All together there's now a set of systems and utilities working together to provide complete Configuration Management (CM) system:

Source Control - CVS
Issues tracking - CVSTrac
Automatic Builds - TeamCity
Unit Testing - NUnit (2.5.4), CPPUnit and MSTest
Automatic Documentation - Doxygen

Latest Changes

The major changes in this release are:

• Add bare N-CREATE calls.
• Add support for Printer SOP Class N-GET.
• Fix Color Printing.
• Add example for multi-frame image creation

There are some more small fixes. Most important, there are no backwards compatibility issues and old tests are running as before. The ease of verifying this short sentence demonstrates the benefits of investing in CM.

Print Managment

Following a user report, we've discovered that the color printing methods doesn't work properly and fixed that. The proper way to create an Image Box is now to call GetImageBox method of the DCXPrintPage class (that represents the film box). Otherwise, you'll have to set the ColorSpace property of the Image Box before calling any other method or property.
Additionally, there's now two new calls in the DCXREQ class that can create film sessions (color or grayscale) with additional paramteres, as for example to set number of pages or priority.
Please check the relevant new version documentation pages for more information

"Hacking" HL7Kit Pro Runtime Service to work with multiple HL7 applications

I know that it's not very common to show how to hack your own application but since this issue has been circling for a while, I'd like to show a workaround that will allow you to use the kit to integrate with many HL7 applications simultaneously.

The kit original design is to communicate with one remote application.

The workaround is to have multiple instances of the HL7 service running. The services can connect to the same database but each mush have it's own queue table.

Each will have it's own configuration file and it's own mapping rules file and mapping definitions but they will all write to the same log file and there can be only one active tray icon.

Here's how to set this up step by step:

1. Stop the HL7 Service.
2. In windows explorer navigate to the installation folder (default is c:\program files\rz software services\hl7) and make a copy of the folder, so you have hl7 and hl72.
3. Create a copy of the HL7_QUEUE table so you have two queue tables or if you prefer, use each service on a different database schema.
4. Use the HL7ServiceConfiguration.exe application in each folder to configure the port settings, mapping files and queue table names. Alternatively you can edit the HL7Service.exe.config file manually.
5. Test your setup by running "HL7Service.exe -run" from two separate command line windows.
6. Configure the new service to run on system startup. This is a bit tricky but here's a way that works:
1. Run regedit
2. navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HL7Service and export it.
3. Edit the reg file and replace all "HL7Service" with "HL7Service2"
4. Save it and double click it to import it to the registry.
5. In regedit change the ImagePath entry of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HL7Service2 to the copied HL7 Folder (hl72)
6. Restart the computer.

Now you should have two services installed: HL7Service and HL7Service2. 

Of course, you can duplicate them as well.

I hope to have a new release soon that will allow multiple destinations and sources of messages.

Roni

DICOM JPEG 2000 Decoding in RZDCX Release 1.0.1.1

[update 24 March 2023: latest HRZ softwarecan be found on HRZ website - www.hrzkit.com]

The new preliminary release of the Fast Strike DICOM Toolkit, RZDCX, adds JPEG 2000 support for communication and decoding. The function Decode of the DCXOBJ class decodes JPEG  2000 DICOM images just like it does for jpeg, jpeg lossless and RLE.
The function SaveBitmap of the DCXIMG class also handles jpeg 2000 in the same manner.

The following sample code snippet shows how to decode a JPEG 2000 image using the Decode function and save it as a new decompressed DICOM file:


            DCXOBJ image = new DCXOBJ();
            String filename = "DCMJ2K";
            image.openFile(filename);
            image.Decode();
            image.saveFile("DCMLEE");

Another little feature of this release is the TransferSyntax property (set only) that can be used to encode or decode objects or explicitly set the transfer syntax, for example to store objects as little endian implicit or big endian implicit. Up until now, created objects could have been stored either as little endian explicit or with one of the supported compressed formats (jpeg, jpeg lossles and rle).

The following code shows how to save files as LEI:

            DCXOBJ image = new DCXOBJ();

            /// ... add elements in

            image.TransferSyntax = TS_LEI;

            image.saveFile("DCMLEI");

The new release is on the downloads page at downloads.hrzkit.com

XRFiles Howto Video

Following the previous post about the launch of XRFiles, here's a short video that shows how to upload, view and share medical imaging exams using XRFiles web site.

www.xrfiles.com

XRFiles is an online personal archive for medical imaging exams.

Using XRFiles anyone can upload, view and share their X-Rays, Ultrasounds, CT's and other medical images.

You probably know that this kind of images don't just open and show when you click (or double click) them on your computer. Many times they are just too big to send by email. XRFiles provides a solution to all that with a simple Upload-Share-View cycle.

Once uploaded, all DICOM Images are processed and listed in the exams page.

The user can review them online using the browser embeded viewer and invite others to review them.

While common web DICOM viewers either compromise quality by converting the images to jpeg or require software installation in the form of ActiveX components or stand alone applications, the XRFiles viewer doesn't require all that and still keep the full image quality including contrast/brightness settings for 16 bit grayscales, utilizing unique IP protected imaging technology. This eliminates all the administration and security hustle that usually involves web viewers distribution.

Another interesting element of the XRFiles web site is the sleek upload process that let you upload simply by dragging and dropping your files on the Transfer Manager Java application.

And in case you're about to ask, the service is free of charge.

DICOM Course - DICOM for Developers

Audience: Software engineers and medical IT professionals with some programming skills

When: November 24-25, 2009
Where: Tel-Aviv
What:

• The DICOM Standard
• Services
• Commands
• Files
• Networking
• Reading and Understanding a Conformance Statement
• Focusing on the DICOM Image
• Creating DICOM Images
• Displaying DICOM Images
• Contrast Transformations
• Working with Series of Images
• Development Tools
• Open Source
• RZDCX
• Building a Server application with RZDCX
• Building a Client application with RZDCX

There are still some places available.

Registration can be made to the first day only (no programming).

For more details: info@roniza.com

RZDCX 1.0.0.8 Released

[update 24 March 2023: Latest releases of HRZ software can be found on HRZ website - www.hrzkit.com]

A new version of RZDCX DICOM Toolkit was released yesterday.
This release includes bug fixes as well as new features.
Some of the new features are:
- A UID generator
- Jpeg and Jpeg Lossless compression including lossless jpeg color compression
- Palette color transformation
- Convert DICOM to Bitmap
For free evaluation copies and full documentation visit our web site.