Customer Reviews

PACS: A Guide to the Digital Revolution

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My review of the book is through the perspective of someone who is somewhat knowledgeable about computer technology but quite lacking in my knowledge of PACS, radiology workflow and processes, and imaging technologies.

Quite simply, this book met all of my goals in filling in the gaps in my knowledge. I'm not going to go through the entire book, but I am going to discuss the chapters that I personally found most useful.

FINANCIAL MODELING
Information technology is full of interesting ideas that lack "financial legs". This chapter discussed finances behind a film-based radiology department and a filmless one including techniques for developing a business case for a PACS.

DICOM
This chapter provides a primer on DICOM. Having a stronger background in HL7, I found this chapter useful in unraveling the mystery and secret language used by DICOM professionals. I now understand the business rational and use of each of the DICOM transactions.

WORKFLOW
This chapter described the workflows in a film-based department and how the workflow should change after the proper implementation of a PACS. Workflow is described from the perspective of the patient, the technologist, and the radiologist. I feel comfortable in creating "straw man workflows" after reading this chapter. One of the most interesting things in this chapter was a description of a traditional time and motion study performed on radiologists before the implementation of a PACS and after implementation.

IMAGE ACQUISITION
This chapter familiarized the reader with the modalities that supply the images to the PACS. I learned about each modality, the different technologies for getting images digitized.

OTHER INTERESTING CHAPTERS
The book also had chapters on Computing Fundamentals, Networking Fundamentals, and Storage Technologies that would be excellent for someone needing a primer in those areas.

SUMMARY
Also, the book did good job of covering certain relevant technical details that would appeal to the more technically inclined but would add to my credibility to be able to understand at a superficial level: Imaging Workstation Technologies, Image Compression, Voice Recognition, Teleradiology, Legal Issues, and Utilization Management.

This review is for the second edition.

I think this book would be very useful for a radiologist or clinical applications specialist who wants an overview of issues to consider when undertaking a PACS implementation. However, DICOM seems to be a very important component of any PACS system, as well as HL7 - but both were barely mentioned, except in passing, in this book.

I actually bought the book on the basis of another person's review where he went through each of the chapters he found useful, and one of those chapters was DICOM. He must have had a different version of this book, because I read it from cover to cover and could not find a chapter dedicated to DICOM. The most I found was a small section on pages 190 - 192 (in the image acquisition chapter) which gives a short history of DICOM but no in-depth details. The paragraph on page 425 (the PACS workstation software chapter), where the author provides information about freeware and shareware DICOM image viewing and manipulating software, is useful.

Interestingly, the most information that can be had about HL7 in this book can be found in the voice recognition chapter...hmmmm.

My bottom line is that if you want a decent *overview* of the whole subject of PACS, this book could be useful, but if you're looking for DICOM or HL7 details, look elsewhere (and if you find a good source of info on these subjects, please let me know at garycolwill@hotmail.com - thanks!)

We are in the process of installing a system wide PACS system at our 350 bed hospital and this book was a god-sent. Explanations are clear and concise, pertinent for all levels of users. I am a radiologist, but our administrator and PACS (to be) administrator also gained much valuable information from this publication.

As a contributing author in this book, I wanted to share some of my comments and remarks. I think Editors did a great job soliciting well known experts in their field to contribute in this book (I am probably the least known - hehe). I think this book provides a very comprehensive review of the topic and I recommend this for anyone thinking about implementing radiology IT systems or currently managing radiology IT systems.

One of the items I found missing in the book was discussion on "Reporting". Although the book does discuss voice recognition in detail, but does not address other reporting methods in digital environment and IT issues related to reporting and report delivery.

Information on HIPAA is slightly dated as lot has changed since these chapters were solicited in 2004. I also found some minor editorial errors (that hopefully will be corrected at second printing).

Another big change that has occured since these chapters were written is the introduction of 64 slice MDCT and Dual Source CT scanners. These scanners have created new and unique issues for radiology IT and PACS due to the enormous amount of data generated by these scanners. These scanners have a great impact on storage, connectivity, interpretation and radiology workflow.

Overall an excellent review of issues related to Radiology IT and PACS.

(...)

I am a radiologist with an interest computer technology. I have hands-on experience with computing but little formal IT education. I've bought most of the other books on PACS from various authors but liked the first edition of the Dreyer book the best, so I thought I'd give this second edition a try.

This recently released edition has many interesting new topics and considerable updates from the topics cover in the first. It's basically a whole new book. Fortunately they have preserved the easy-to-understand, yet, excellently detailed style from the first edition.

If you're a radiologist, technologist or IT person interested in learning more about radiology IT, I highly recommend this book.

Regards,

Charles R.

As a healthcare IT Systems integrator, I found this book to be an excellent overview of the concepts, terminology, workflow and standards involved in PACS & RIS.

It is readable, illustrated and understadnable. It does not drone on in esoteric concepte, but addresses PACS in practical, relevant ways.

The articles included in this edition present a solid picture of PACS from the ground up, with an organizational point of view, which can be understood from an IT to a clinical perspective or from a clinical to an IT perspective. Many thanks!

I too, as the above customer, bought this book to plan the installation of a PACS in our 150 bed hospital. The experiences of the authors and the depth of coverage was excellent for myself (RT/PACS administrator) and the chief of our department (radiologist) as we planned our PACS system. I learned everything I needed to have an intelligent conversation with the vendors we chose to deal with. Our next task will be voice recognition which the book discusses in detail. Thanks!