Project: DDW (the DICOM Data Warehouse)
Associated Projects: ddw-docker-gway, ddw-docker-dbase

Purpose: Use MIRTH to parse DICOM object headers and capture arbitrary tag/value pairs to Postgresql

This project contains 10 files:
a) this README
b) 2 sh scripts to load and dump dbases from postgresQL
c) purged-ddw.sql (builds the DICOM Datawarehouse dbase)
d) mirth_ddw.xml (MIRTH channel to gather/parse DICOM info into the dbase)
e) ddw-schema.bmp (a relationship diagram of the ddw schema)
f) 3 Javascript files (to be loaded as Code templates in Mirth)
g) the LICENSE file

Installation:
To use this sware, the user must independently install MIRTH Connect (> V2.x, requires Java JRE 1.6 or newer), postgreSQL (>V9.x), and pgAdmin. Then:

a) for MIRTH, open the MIRTH admin tool and import the channel
b) for postgresql 
	i) during install set the account/password to be postgresql/postgresql
	ii) open the pgAdmin tool and create the stub for the "ddw"
	dbase, owner "postgresql". Then from the command line run the load 
	script
c) On MS-Windows, make two folders
	i) d:\avail (the folder mirth uses as a Source)
	ii) c:\error_images (folder where logs will be written)

Usage Notes:
a) out of the box, MIRTH uses it's own local "Derby" dbase. This fills quickly. You will be better off having MIRTH use postgresql. Make a stub dbase in postgresql called MIRTHdb, owner "postgresql". Then go to the MIRTH Server Manager/Database, and fill out.
b)The processing "pipeline" is to drop a DICOM file into the folder "/media/dbase/ddw_imgs". MIRTH then processes this file and forwards the data to postgresql. This is a useful way to build the custom mapping for new/unknown scanner versions
c) When you have defined the new scanner mapping, you will want to have a DICOM receiver on the system so that whole exams can be sent and processed. The easiest way to do this is to get RSNA CTP and configure a pipeline with a DICOM import service and a file folder output service. 
see http://mircwiki.rsna.org/index.php?title=CTP-The_RSNA_Clinical_Trial_Processor
    
To test the system, make sure that both MIRTH and postgresql are running. Then drop a DICOM file into the folder defined above. You should see 2 new files:
1) /media/dbase/error_images/log.rtf
2) /media/dbase/error_images/transform.rtf

Also, you should see new entries in the Patient, Exam and Series tables in the DDW dbase if the scanner is known. 



Find papers on DDW here 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3056966/  
and 
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10278-015-9830-4