Research And Development, Information Systems Based On The Dicom Rt Radiotherapy

Radiation therapy (RT), more than any other oncology treatment methods (such as surgery and chemical therapy) ,relies heavily and often exclusively on medical imaging and other medical information. There are some disadvantages in radiation therapy , such as limited data transfer between applications , limited linking between applications , lack of information management , and closed environment. How to use information in the process of radiotherapy effectively is a new issue.The state of the art in radiation therapy take advantage of the development of DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) . DICOM came out with a separate supplement DICOM RT . It provides the capability for different devices to communicate by sending objects such as images or RT plans, querying remote devices, and retrieving these objects, interchange information with open media and integrate with the healthcare environment.DICOM is now a mature standard, and the core RT objects have been ratified since 1997. After a lot of hard work understanding, developing and testing product interoperability in the radiotherapy context, many foreign institutes and manufacturers now have products available that support one or more of the DICOM RT objects. By searching articles in the fields of radiation therapy, there is no study and development in China so far. In order to make full use of radiotherapy and imaging devices, and improve the effects of radiation therapy, it is necessary to develop a radiation therapy information system (or oncology information system).With a deep research in DICOM and DICOM RT, DICOM RT objects were created by using object oriented(OO) method . The main part of this thesis emphasis on the concept and implementation of two DICOM services : worklist and Q/R(Query and Retrieve) . These two services play a crucial role in radiation therapy information system.The system consists of information management module, Q/R module , image processing module , treatment record module , printing module . All these modules focus on the implements of Q/R and Worklist. A common platform with the frame of distributed database system was established. Such tools and their coupling with emerging technologies (such as web services) can help to develop, assess, and efficient utilize new treatment modalities in radiation oncology.Quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) is important in radiation therapy .How to implement an effective QA (or QC) program at the level of dataflow remains an important issue in radiation therapy . It can take advantages of DICOMRT to perform QA/QC between different institutesThere is no doubt that the trend not only in radiation therapy , but also in medical information has increasingly moved toward digital and distributed architecture. Full integration of medical imaging information technologies (IT) and patient information in the hospital environment will be achieved. PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication Systems) and any other information technologies will bring us a filmless hospital ( or digital hospital).All what we done just realized a small part of medical information. As long as vendors, clinicians and hospital administration, engineering and IT departments continue to work together towards the common goal of optimizing work flow, diagnostic quality and patient healthcare, it will happen.