Query with multiple modalities?

[Karamazov]

When I try to search in a PACS using "\" to query multiple modalities, only the first modality is chosen. For example "CR\MR" returns only CR images. However, if I use the wildcard "*" I recieve the correct hits. For example: "C*" returns both CR and CT.

Is it possible to search for images by specifying multiple modalities? (using DIMSE_findUser)

[Karamazov]

As a newbie I would have thought about searching the forum at first. I guess this thread answers my question: viewtopic.php?t=1803

[Michael Onken]

Dear Karamazov,

DCMTK just sends over the wire what you enter as value for a specific tag, e. g. Modality. So DCMTK permits you to send a Modality attribute including something like "CR\MR". However, the DICOM standard does not permit such a search since Modality is a single-value field (VM 1) and also the the Query/Retrieve Service definition in part does not extend that (it does do for querying UIDs).

However, there are other fields you can query which were (to my knowledge) mainly introduced by the needs of the IHE initiative. The attribute "Modalities in Study" lets you query for which modalities are inside a specified study (i.e. this is a query on study level in the Q/R model). According to this article [1] on the newsgroup, it cannot be used as with multiple values either, but by this field you can fastly find out what's inside a study without querying for every Series. Although it's not officially permitted, I think I saw implementations (servers) that will respond "correctly! to a multi-valued query on that field.

Regards,
Michael

[1] http://groups.google.com/group/comp.pro ... c4e056d24/

[Karamazov]

Thanks!