Storing ECG to a PACS

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Introduction

The application in this article will allow easy storing of electrocariographs (ECGs) to a DICOM PACS.

Background

Many ECG Cart manufacturers have got their own closed format. For Medical Images, the DICOM standard has provided hospitals with manufacturer independent solutions. Some manufacturers recently started adopting DICOM for ECG systems.

In 2008, an ECG Toolkit has been released which provides support for 3 major open ECG formats: SCP-ECG, HL7 aECG and DICOM-ECG. The Toolkit is available here.

Besides providing an ECG Library, the ECG Toolkit also has got some handy applications including a basic ECG viewer:

Using the Application

The application can be used as a Service or as a command line application.

To use the application as a service, use installutil to register the service. Start application manually from the management console.

To use the application from the command line, use:

> ECGtoPACS.exe runcmd

To configure the application, change the values specified in ECGtoPACS.exe.config:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
	<appSettings>
		<add key="ImportDir" value="C:\ecg2pacs" />
		<add key="EraseOnSuccess" value="true" />
		<!-- configuration items for the DICOM-ECG format -->
		<add key="Mortara Compatibility" value="true" />
		<!-- configuration items for the DICOM PACS -->
		<add key="Server" value="127.0.0.1" />
		<add key="AESCU" value="ANYSCU" />
		<add key="AESCP" value="STORESCP" />
		<add key="Port" value="104" />
	</appSettings>
</configuration>

Place a SCP-ECG, HL7 aECG or DICOM-ECG file into the ImportDir. Example ECG files can be found here.

Using the Code

Reading an ECG of unknown type can be done by:

UnknownReader reader = new UnknownReader();
IECGFormat src = reader.Read(sFilePath);

if (reader.getError() != 0)
{
	ServiceLogger.Instance.Log("Reading ECG error: " + 
		reader.getErrorMessage() + "!", EventLogEntryType.FailureAudit);
	return;
}

if ((src == null)
||  !src.Works())
{
	ServiceLogger.Instance.Log("Unknown error during reading of ECG!", 
				EventLogEntryType.FailureAudit);
	return;
}

Sending ECG to PACs is performed by:

IECGManagementSystem pacs = ECGConverter.Instance.getECGManagementSystem("PACS");

pacs.Config.Set(_SystemConfig); // set configuration of PACS

// save ECG to PACS providing an PatientID (null) and DICOM format configuration.
if (pacs.SaveECG(src, null, _FormatConfig) != 0) 
{
	ServiceLogger.Instance.Log("Storing ECG to PACS failed!", 
				EventLogEntryType.FailureAudit);
	return;
}

Points of Interest

Retrieving of ECG information can be achieved by using five properties provided by IECGFormat interface. The five properties are:

• Demographics
• Signals
• Diagnostics
• GlobalMeasurements
• LeadMeasurements

History

• 13^th October, 2008: First version of ECGtoPACS