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INFINITT PACS Migration White Paper 20090213
INFINITT PACS Migration White Paper 20090213
White Paper
INFINITT Solution for Migrating Legacy PACS
1. Introduction
1.1. Overview
PACS has been around for a long time. Now there are many PACS installations around the
world that are two or more years old. As technology evolves, many modalities produce more
images that require high performance PACS, and these old legacy PACS installations are
getting slow, unreliable, and expensive to maintain. It is estimated that more than 20% of
PACS buyers are to replace their existing legacy PACS.
The improvements in hardware such as computers, networks, and storages of media
technology, as well as the software such as PACS and operating system resulted in high
performance PACS. Replacing legacy PACS with new one provides more efficient and costeffective environment in terms of speed, accessibility, functionality, and ease-of-use. To take
advantage of new PACS, one should consider
Price of the vendor's PACS software, future software updates, and service contract
New hardware such as larger servers, storage system, new workstations and monitors
Network upgrade for increased bandwidth
Training and installation of new PACS
Migration of legacy PACS data and the service contract status for the legacy PACS
during migration
Besides purchasing the new PACS software with supporting hardware, one of the most
important factor is the migration of data from legacy PACS to new PACS.
PACS is a complicated system in which many hardware and software are involved. Thus, the
migration is not as simple as one might hope. For a small, relatively new facility with
moderate patient volume, the migration would be less complicated. However, for hospitals
with many years of data, the migration is expensive, cumbersome, time-consuming, and often
labor-extensive.
On the other hand, PACS buyers want to be able to use all the old information in the new
PACS without any loss or restriction in minimal time of migration. They want the new PACS
to be up and running as soon as possible after they purchase the new PACS.
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There are two types of data in the migration: image data and text data. Text data contains
information about patient, study, report, and other data while image data contains medical
images. The migration data can also be divided into DICOM data and non-DICOM data.
DICOM is an international standard for handling, storing, printing, and transmitting
information in medical imaging. DICOM standards specify standard formats for storing
images and reports such as JPEG, JPEG 2000, MPEG2, SR (Structured Report) Documents,
etc. Most PACS vendors incorporate the DICOM standards into their products. In those
PACS products which support DICOM standards, DICOM images and reports are stored
using the DICOM standard formats. Transferring DICOM data from legacy PACS to new
PACS is not difficult as long as both follow the DICOM standards. But it is time-consuming
because transferring the images using the established DICOM protocol is slow. On the other
hand, the database structure for the text information and non-DICOM data remain proprietary
for each vendor, and it usually takes extra effort to migrate and verify the information
successfully.
Data Type
Data
Characteristics
DICOM data
Images, DICOM SR
(Structured Reports)
Non-DICOM
data
Hospitals should prepare for the migration thoroughly and carefully to optimize the
performance and minimize the cost. For successful replacement of legacy PACS, one should
consider
Amount of data to be migrated (amount of primary active data and amount of
secondary data in long term storage)
Type of primary active storage and secondary long term storage
DICOM standards conformance of legacy PACS
Running status of legacy PACS and its archive during migration
Go-live date of new PACS
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Amount of data
Compression method used in legacy PACS
Type of primary and secondary long-term storage
System load and possible migration hours
The migration usually proceeds while the legacy PACS is in operation and prior to golive of the new PACS. In INFINITT experience, it typically takes one to three or more
months to migrate 10 TB of uncompressed image data depending on the migration
method and the environment such as system load. The typical migration time for
compressed and uncompressed image data using Direct Migration and Indirect
Migration method is shown in Table 2 and 3.
The above factors affecting the length of migration time are inherent in PACS and the
environment of hospitals. Therefore, it is important to find suitable migration method
and optimize the migration process to minimize the migration time.
Amount of Data
5T Uncompressed
5T Jpeg Lossless
5T Jpeg Lossy
Number of Studies
Time of Migration
150,000
500,000
1,500,000
0.5 ~ 1 Month
2 Months
5 Months
Amount of Data
5T Uncompressed
5T Jpeg Lossless
5T Jpeg Lossy
Number of Studies
Time of Migration
150,000
500,000
1,500,000
1 ~ 2 Month
4 Months
10 Months
The PACS data consists of not only images and related information following
DICOM standard but also other proprietary information such as gray scale
window level, key image selections, etc.
The data format of legacy PACS is different depending on the vendors and
their program versions. It is not uncommon that the legacy PACS data is
incompatible with the new PACS.
There may be corrupted data in legacy PACS.
It is not easy to get help from legacy PACS vendors about their internal data
format.
Therefore, monitoring the migration status and verifying the migrated data for its
accuracy is important.
Stability of System during Migration
The hospitals daily work should not be interrupted while the replacement is taking
place. Many hospitals uses their legacy PACS during migration, and the migration
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may give extra load on the existing legacy PACS which can make the legacy PACS
slow or unstable for normal daily work. Often, the migration is possible only during
off-work hours, not to interrupt the hospitals daily work, but this increases the
migration time.
The replacement should be planned and optimized to minimize the downtime of
system while maintaining the stable system running.
Storage Requirement for Migrated Data
During the migration, both legacy PACS and new PACS are in operation, and
migration creates copies of legacy PACS Data in new PACS. Therefore, hospitals
need extra storage to hold the copies of legacy PACS data. In many cases, the required
extra amount of storage space is as much as the storage space that is required to hold
the legacy PACS data. The shortage in storage space should not hinder the progress of
migration.
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There are basically two kinds of migration services: Direct (rapid) Migration Service and
Indirect (non-invasive) Migration Service. Direct Migration Service is to migrate data by
accessing the storage file system of legacy PACS directly while Indirect Migration Service is
to migrate data by DICOM standard query/retrieve.
The migration services are further divided by applied tools and methods as shown in Table 4.
Each migration methods are explained in detail in following sections.
Migration Services
Methods
Tool
INFINITT Smart Convert
INFINITT NetPush
INFINITT Broker
INFINITT Smart Router
INFINITT Broker
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INFINITT NETPUSH first searches and makes a list of images to be migrated in the
legacy PACS storage.
INFINITT NETPUSH reads the images and sends the images to INFINITT PACS
server by DICOM C-Move operation.
Upon receiving the images, INFINITT PACS server registers and stores the image in
INFINITT PACS.
The advantage of this method is that it is simple, fast and easy. The disadvantages are:
The data in database and images are related to each other in PACS. That is, the data in
database and image should be consistent to each other. The Basic Direct Method uses only
the information in images DICOM header. If there is wrong information in images DICOM
header, the migration would proceed with wrong information and would be very difficult to
verify the migrated data.
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and stores the images according to the information in each images DICOM header.
The workflow of Conversion Method is:
INFINITT Smart Converter searches and makes a list of images to be migrated in the
legacy PACS storage.
INFINITT Smart Converter reads the images and converts the images to standard
DICOM formatted images if necessary.
INFINITT Smart Converter then sends the images to INFINITT PACS server by
DICOM C-Move operation.
Upon receiving the images, INFINITT PACS server registers and stores the image in
INFINITT PACS.
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The data in database and images are related to each other in PACS. That is, the data in
database and image should be consistent to each other. The Conversion Method also uses
only the information in images DICOM header. If there is wrong information in images
DICOM header, the migration would proceed with wrong information and would be very
difficult to verify the migrated data.
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It is very fast.
There is no additional storage required.
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The priority of data to be migrated can be configured by various filter condition such
as patient id, study date, study instance uid, etc.
It automatically searches and migrates the data to be migrated by querying
PACS/RIS database or using DICOM queries.
Migration can be perform in one or more legacy PACS at the same time.
Migration status can easily be monitored, and failed studies can be retried
automatically or manually.
Migration time can be configured so that migration is performed only during preconfigured times to reduce the system load.
INFINITT uses Direct Migration Service if possible because Indirect Migration Service is
much slower (two or more times slower) than Direct Migration Service. However, Indirect
Migration Service can be used in conjunction with Direct Migration Service if Direct
Migration Service is impossible for some reason.
INFINITT provides 4 basic methods for Indirect Migration Service:
INFINITT Smart Router requests DICOM C-Find to legacy PACS to find the studies
which match the pre-defined filter condition.
Using the result from the above request, INFINITT Smart Router requests DICOM
C-Move to legacy PACS to transfer the matched study data to INFINITT PACS.
Legacy PACS transfers the data to INFINITT PACS according to the requests.
INFINITT PACS registers and stores the transferred data.
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It can be used not only for migration, but also for data exchange among two or more
different PACS installations.
There is no need to analyze the data and structure of legacy PACS.
Minimal amount of data can be migrated during the migration period, and the rest of
data can be migrated on the fly when it is needed.
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Legacy PACS data is migrated accurately, and the migrated data can be verified for
its accuracy.
It takes more time to migrate legacy PACS data because of the additional time for
correcting the information in DICOM header.
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The general advantages and disadvantages between Direct and Indirect Migration Services
are shown in Table 5.
Indirect Migration Service
Disadvantages
Migration application should be
customized for each type of source
PACS
Source PACS vendor may obstruct
"reverse engineering" by competitors
Greater hardware requirements for
migration appliance
Requires more processing power
Requires drivers for legacy media
Target PACS must be able to handle
high DICOM input rates
More intensive site presence required
during migration
Table 5 Comparison between Direct and Indirect Migration Services
Among the seven migration methods explained in the previous sections, Corrective Methods
(Corrective Direct Method in Direct Migration Service and Corrective Indirect Method in
Indirect Migration Service) are recommended. The other methods can only be used for small
institution which has small amount of data for migration. Simple move of data from legacy
PACS to new PACS is not generally enough for PACS replacement. The correctness of
migrated data should be rigorously verified.
There are two sources of errors in the migrated data: One is the inherent errors already exist
in legacy PACS data due to the errors in legacy PACS solution, incorrect use of legacy PACS,
etc, and the other is errors introduced during the migration process. The corrective methods
can correct the inherent errors in the data during the PACS migration and provide means to
verify the correctness of migrated data while the other methods provide simple conversion
and move of PACS data.
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3. Conclusion
PACS migration is time-consuming and labor-extensive process. Existing legacy PACS and
hospital environments should be surveyed and analyzed to decide and optimize suitable
migration process. Careful and through analysis enable to predict and avoid possible
migration pitfalls and bottleneck in advance. Thus, optimized migration process by careful
and thorough analysis of legacy PACS and hospital environments leads to minimizing
migration period and expenses.
How good the best suitable and optimized migration process is, sufficient system and human
resources should be available throughout the migration period so that migration can be
performed smoothly. There may be extra load on legacy PACS for migration, and daily
hospital operation could be compromised for maximum migration efficiency. Those
compromises are unacceptable in many cases because it hinders the daily operation of
hospitals. Thus, it is important to move clinical operation to new PACS as soon as possible.
According to past migration experiences, INFINITT prefers Direct Migration approach to
Indirect Migration approach if possible because
Sometimes, it is not possible to apply Direct Migration Service to all legacy PACS data. But
it has been always the case that applying Direct Migration Service was possible for some
portion of legacy PACS data if not all. And combination of Direct and Indirect Migration
Service has been proven to provide reasonable migration performance in terms of time and
cost in those cases.
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