Missing First Studies of the Day in OpenREM Import

[Samuel Grima]

Dear OpenREM users,

We are experiencing a rather specific issue with OpenREM data import and would appreciate any guidance.

We have noticed that, for some systems, the first few studies performed each day are not being imported into OpenREM. So far, we have confirmed this for CT systems, although we have not yet checked whether the same issue is occurring for the other modalities. Our OpenREM data is imported from the hospital PACS via Conquest, and the affected studies still do not appear in OpenREM even when manually pushed through the Cron scheduler.

What makes the issue more difficult to interpret is that there does not appear to be a consistent pattern. The number of missing studies varies from day to day, and there does not seem to be a fixed time threshold either. For example, on some days the first study appearing in OpenREM may be one performed after 11:00, while on others it may be after 12:00 or another time entirely.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue, or could suggest what might be causing this behaviour? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[dpla...@gmail.com]

Hi, 

Are you querying the PACS once per day to get the data into OpenREM? Our PACS has a limit on the total number of series it will return from a single query. If the total number of series in the query exceeds this value, only the most recent series, up to the limit, are returned. That sort of behaviour could explain what you're seeing. The solution for me was to get the series limit increased, and also query PACS multiple times a day for a restricted time range.

I hope that might be of some help. 

Kind regards, 

David

[Samuel Grima]

Dear David,

Thank you for your very quick response.

Our PACS is queried three times daily.

Regarding the limit issue, our team is investigating this further within the setup scripts. In the interim, I conducted an independent evaluation of a specific system and determined that, on two separate days, the extracted studies differed. Specifically:

• Day 1: 15 out of 18 total studies were extracted.
• Day 2: 14 out of 21 total studies were extracted.

Additionally, on other days, we received 11 or 12 studies, where even in these instances, the total daily studies exceeded this limit. Therefore, it appears that there is no consistent limit applied.

Kind regards,

Samuel