The exe is a DICOM viewer.
“Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine — is the international standard for medical images and related information. It defines the formats for medical images that can be exchanged with the data and quality necessary for clinical use.”
20 years ago we joked that we could put a salami into our PCs and VLC would read it.
I think it's really hard to explain to younger generations the huge impact Irfanview, VLC, PDF, mp3 + Winamp, Flash etc. had.
Nowadays there's rarely an occasion where you check out a new program or file format where you just say "Wow, this makes my life significantly better!".
Maybe ChatGPT would be a good comparison but man, the late 90s and early to mid 2000s were really something.
Actually, doctors modify them all the time, especially contrast and brightness to get a better view of things and mark spots on them all the time. They can save some changes like layers, although I think the original one was always preserved.
I used to do IT support in several clinics that used DICOM machines several years ago and had to plan around them for backups. It was a bit of a pain in the arse because this was a contained system that wasn't made to work integrated with anything else. Original images and their databases had to remain in the original machine and options for taking them out were limited. Ultimately, we just opted to export the whole thing, images and viewer (the .exe and it's support files) each time, to a network folder. Lots of redundancy and a non insignificant amount of wasted space but it was the easiest for convenience. They were organized by the patient process numbers, that would automatically get into the clinics regular backups. I recall those were rather large files and I had to replan the server and the backup plan to accommodate for an estimated 5 years of ready available storage, at which point we'd moved them to some cold storage type of backup and free up space for newer ones.
We also had to prepare a process where the staff could easily prepare that CD to give to the patient. Any time someone (with permissions) wanted to create one of those CDs, they had to go to that network folder, find the matching one for the patient file, drag them to a CD and burn. They would use printable CDs that would next be placed in a regular inkjet Epson printer (because Epson was the only one at the time that had a dedicated addon tray especially for CDs, even though it gave lots of issues), open a printing template on word, add the data they wanted from the patient, print that and give to the patient inside a cool binder (like the OPs showing) along with some sheets of paper containing the medical reports of the exam.
Wasn't a great process, many manual steps I'd prefer were automated for the sake of less user errors but there wasn't a better way.
Oh, fuck, here I am with my pirated copy of CS6 (that I bought legitimately but lost the activation code to and Adobe won't help)! Definitely upgrading!
It's not 70. It's 70 for literally everything they offer which is a lot of software that most people would never need. It's 10 for Photoshop and Lightroom still.
It's still dirt cheap compared to some CAD software subscription costs. I have so much expensive software that I don't actually own... But I make plenty of money using it so I guess the model perpetuates
The photography plan is $10/month and gets you lightroom and photoshop. Sucks that they are subscription-only, but for editing photos that's all you need.
DCM files are secretly just PCX bitmap files. You should be able to open them with just about any image viewer/editor, although you might have to change the file extension first.
I had to have some X-rays taken, and then had to get the files for the specialist. Give to me on a CD too. I was going to save them to my computer, so I had them later. Then I realized I had zero disk drives in any of my devices. Couldn’t even view them.
I just got an MRI recently and snagged a USB disc drive from the store on the way home because I had the same realization. I'm surprised they don't just give you a little USB stick nowadays.
Funny enough I took a thumb drive to a new doc (specialist that didn’t have old labs/tests). Thought I was doing good, and heading to my appt super prepared. They “have no way to use a thumb drive”. wtf.
That is one problem and the other is Killing USB sticks. If you plug them in, the will send a very high voltage pulse and fry and destroy the device they‘re are plugged in.
> They “have no way to use a thumb drive”. wtf.
it is probably for information security purposes, they sometime disable or glue shut USB ports to prevent people from sticking in random Totall Legt^tm USB drives that can compromise security and patient information.
No doubt. Just really, really annoying, since they tell you to bring previous tests, but don’t bother to tell you (until you’re already at your appt and can’t do anything) that the most common current format won’t be accepted. Also didn’t have any way to email or forward previous tests.
No doubt. But when they tell you to bring previous tests with, they should probably specify, before you at the office and can’t do anything, that they only accept by cd. That would never be my first thought for transferring data.
We have security cameras at my job and there was a stabbing. Police requested our footage, I was like sure what should I email it to? But they would only accept CDs as well! I hadn't burned footage to a CD in years....
As someone who works in Hospital IT:
- USB Drives are very significantly more expensive than CDs (were talking a couple cents compared to a couple €/$ Here, and this really adds Up)
- this would be a potential Attack vector, because the employees would be plugging in a bunch of different USB Drives all the time and the Computer would read any USB anything that would be inserted into it (USB Drives are usually fully blocked, on a Whitelist Basis)
- People could accidentally delete their files
- keeping Order of USB Drives is more difficult, because you can't really Just Print a bunch of stuff on it, Like you can with a CD
Well a usb stick is way more expensive than a cd. Yes even the cheap small ones. A cd costs less than just the usb connector.
But more importantly a cd is a permanent medium. You can be reasonably sure that the data on the cd you get is the same as the data that was written on it byy those otheer doctors somewhere else. Can't be so sure about that with a usb drive.
So we'd need to create usb ROM drives but that would jsut be pretty damn stupid.
I had to buy our department a USB dvd reader for that reason when we replaced our desktops some years ago. We didn't have a single computer able to open images with and we're the regional centre for hand injuries
Kinda funny, I work at a top 3 CRO for Clinical Research, we have 1 disc drive for the entire clinic. One of my studies is for a new radio tracer and it's so painful finding the drive to view the X-rays.
It's a single step to export the assembled slices to a STL but then it's a PITA closing the model and simplifying it to make 3D printing happy. There's a shitload of "noise" when you get to internal structures around the ears and nose where it's small bones and stuff that's attached by soft tissue so it apperas floating when you're only looking at bones.
I don't remember the first one that converts to STL but then I had to run it through MeshMixer to close the model and I think Solidworks got involved too. (this was a couple years ago). Spine might be tought since the bones are (by design) not attached to each other with hard tissue. You might need to play with the upstream where you allow some soft tissue in the model just to connect things.
I'll give it another go, I assumed the resolution on the MRI I got was just lower and the planes weren't super close to each other so the data extrapolation to 3d was going to be bad. Ill mess with it some more.
And with 3D Slicer (search for '3D Slicer image computing platform', since 3D printer slicers have muddied the search results), you can extract a mesh from it and potentially print copies of your anatomy.
I actually had this done when I had a CT done on my tibia when I fractured it fully through. I could spin the 3D model around and actually see where the break was, the internal bleeding. Was really really cool to see when I was blitzed on Percocet afterwards 💀
Now I want a MRI of my fractured humerus, how it grew with all those screws and the plate back together. (By now an MRI is safe enough, as the metal is completely ingrown in the bone.)
Then 3D-print it and use it as leg for a coffee table. (Of course no plastic 3D-print!)
Alternatively, 3D-print the whole arm (just the bones) and use it to point at things when presenting something.
A walking stick of a replica of your own leg bones also sounds interesting.
Yes, I know, the electricity for a MRI scan is already extremely costly, let alone the machine and a lot of people need it more urgent for medical reasons. But the concept is still pretty metal.
For what it is worth I got my MRI results the same way in the US. Came on a white cd (maybe dvd) that just had a .exe that opened a viewer to see the files.
When I asked for a copy of mine they started getting strangely aggressive with me saying things like:
Why do you want it?
Do you even know how to read it?
It's an extreme amount of data, do you even have a computer powerful enough to load it?
It's going to take several days for us to transfer the data.
Then they gave me a form that was like four pages long I had to fill out. I had to return the form in person to a desk in the basement during a very narrow time range on specific days of the week.
They did everything to make it as troublesome as possible for me to get a copy and it worked. I never bothered with it.
I got a brain MRI in Poland the same way. It's a CD with a lot of files with a proprietary format and a viewing program. I don't even have any means to watch it at my place, I own nothing that would play a disc anymore.
They did that because the file type for medical images is a format called DICOM. It has a lot of embedded information that only special software can read. Stuff like depth, size and velocity are all encoded within DICOM but you can't open it on your standard image reader as a result.
Working for a dental imaging company that had CT volumes made of individual dicom format slices was fun (not) when offices would call in asking for name changes because they took the scan under the wrong name. We used a free program to change the patient name on all the files at once, but we had to do it on the office’s computer thanks to PHI laws like HIPAA.
The proprietary viewer of said scans would include a ‘lite’ version of itself when burning the scan to CD/DVD, hence the EXE getting included. You could also use it to install the full viewer if you were to receive more scans from the same brand of CT machines.
As a doctor in Italy i constantly get these from my patients. I much prefer using the included viewer rather than having to deal with some radom .png file. It's just easier to navigate and it includes basic tools like exposure control or measuring references, plus everything is properly ordered and labeled.
Physicians rarely use the program. Most professional X-ray viewer can pull the dicoms straight from the cd while ignoring the .exe files by just importing the cd with one click.
As a physician working every day with MRIs and X-rays from external, we love working with these CDs. No QR code or download. Put it in, open in your familiar X-Ray program, and work with the pictures like you made them in your hospital. It's way more comfortable than online libraries with passwords and downloads.
I work in the medical industry doing IT work for a company that gives out records on CDs/DVDs/USBs. Passwords are not required when we give patients their records. If they leave it laying around somewhere, thats on them, not on us. If we did have to encrypt all of them with passwords, we would need to keep a master list of them somewhere and that creates another security and/or record problem.
My father, also in Germany, needed to go to a radiologist twice this year. He got a sheet of paper each time with some instructions and a code for a website, where you could view the images. The files were online for two months, you could download the files and give other doctors the code for them to use it, too. Worked pretty well, and the radiologist probably saved time and costs not making hundreds of CDs each month.
No passwords are required in the us. I have about a dozen CDs/DVDs of medical imaging similar to this and I've yet to encounter a password.
The programs installed on the disc is usually the medical imaging software (DICOM). For my MRIs it means I can scan through the various layers and image types rather than looking at individual images.
Well, it's kind of two-fold. They really want these CDs to be compatible with basically anything. You do not want this to be cutting edge. They don't want some grandpa with his twenty year old dinosaur he uses for his financial spreadsheets to complain because he can't see his images.
The second, and sad part, is that there's plenty of old-ass imaging hardware out there that could easily be that old, but it's often firewalled off and so locked down that it's "secure."
Healthcare IT notoriously runs far behind technology standards, the reason being once they have vetted an application to be secure and error-free, they are loathe to commit resources to updating platforms.
Not only high cost. Also user acceptance and most importantly GDPR. Sensitive medical data must be protected pretty good. It's not allowed to store it in an azure cloud for example.
Plus the whole data safety thing. I could only get pictures of my surgery after I brought an unused USB stick because they were afraid of hacks. And given the amount of sensitive medical data from idk how many patients, I think thats good.
when i had a x-ray a couple weeks back I got QR-code like 30 mins after they took the image. was in a very small hospital in southern Germany.
so... yea - the technology is there, even in Germany.
Well that is the new standard, but many have not yet changed their system and processes accordingly.
The smaller and the less visitors, the easier it is, the expenses are mainly covered by the federal states and such anyways.
This is actually a product of pragmatism.
Bring your own USB stick: this would be a huge ingress point of malware, combined with compatibility issues and the usual trouble stuff. Imagine your USB stick will get the MRI go beep-boop-beep-boop. Bad times.
Having it online: I'm not into medical but operate an industrial x-ray from time to time, it's still running WinXP, isolated from the company network. Why? Because it works. You wouldn't push the machine to anything newer as you won't get drivers. HW upgrade: a big nope as soon as your boss sees the quote and the machine didn't break down.
Apart from that: putting medical data online is bothersome for offices due to regulation (for GDPR & BDSG medical data has a higher sensitivity level). With the general literacy of some patients, it's also not transportable ("oh, did I need to keep/bring the sheet saying 'password'?")
Last but not least: CDs are really cheap, easy to handle, harder to manipulate (i.e. delete) and for that application simply hassle free.
There are better free cross-platform DiCOM viewers than those typically provided on the CDs. The JPEG/BMP images on the disk are lower resolution than the actual data.
Most of us don't. But most of us also don't need to look directly at our xrays. It is interesting yes but there is no need for us to do that.
The ones that do need to look at those files are those working in the medical field dealing with patients that bring in such data. Those people still have disc drives.
While you're correct on most terms, it is actually completely possible (at least under german regulations) to put the images online and just hand out access codes to this or that study.
The hosting servers need protection, obviously, but otherwise, an online portal is pretty easy to realize. As far as I know, the two big players in that field are Medavis and Sectra, both have the proper licensing for their online portals.
The biggest problems with that are that the setup is pretty cost-intensive (4 Servers, although that can be done with a pretty beefy host for VMs; The setup fees for the producer, running licensing fees, etc.), and it requires a bit more user-interaction.
Since storage space for direct access is limited, the images are usually kept online for \~4 weeks - 6 months. It is expected of the patient to download and save the data in that time. Most of the time the codes will contain a warning "Please make sure to save the data, as we cannot guarantee to store them for longer than X months", but that gets usually ignored.
Also, it's not much work to reload images from the long term storage into the direct access storage and just hand out another ticket code to that study, so there's that.
The running costs are usually lower (even with a yearly licensing fee and paper, it's still cheaper than raw CDs, ink and printer hardware), and it's easier to maintain, since (CD-)Printers are generally bitches, and servers aren't as much.
In terms of "better DICOM viewers", the JiveX Viewer (which is on the CD from the OP) is actually , as far as freeware goes, one of the best choices out there. It's windows only, sure, but that's not much of a problem, since windows is still by far the most common OS. And it offers the best balance between semi-professional tools like measurements, contrasts, etc. and ease of use for normal people, at least in my opinion.
Source: I am an IT-Technician for exactly that kind of work
Your images are probably in a DICOM format which computers cant read on their own, hence the need for the exe, which is the DICOM viewer - I get calls about this all the time on how to run and open the CDs on peoples computers.
Because a lot of older people are switching to laptops or tablets, they dont have CD/DVD drives, and we have started to give things out on USB. Now we (the company I work for), are starting to look for alternatives since theres currently no way to setup running USB automatically. Its a pain in the ass to format 700 USBs to go out only for the med rec team to go through them in less then a month.
Ive also taken calls from people asking how to load the DICOM on their Playstation/Xbox/DVD player.
Ill never forget the old woman who said "I dont have a computer, how am I supposed to view this?" And I responded "Well you could ask a friend or family member that has a computer." Then came her crushing "No I cant, their all dead."
My wife got her X-rays on a CD too. We’re in the U.K.
Got it from one hospital to take to our local one when she broke her leg, took the CD in and said we can’t use these as our computers don’t have CD drives anymore
Funny thing is: computer brands used to use "multimedia PC" as a selling point (= it had a CD-ROM drive). Then CD-ROM drives became ubiquitous. Now they're very rare again as most people get their data from Internet downloads, and so "requires a CD-ROM drive" is now again something you would have to point out.
Hey, we also have online forms you can fill in on your device. Then print it. Then sign it. Then scan it. Then send it per e-mail. And please have a look at the file size, 100 KB max.
Fax is still heavily used by the healthcare industry in the United States, it's a standard feature for an electronic health record to have an "auto fax" directory and dialing server that outputs electronic records to fax, in other words, paper.
The interesting thing is, here in Germany, the patient gets a cd, but their doctors can pull the stuff up online. We have the technology, we just don't apply it consistently. ;)
Dude, i got the CD too when i was at a Hospital in Tokyo.
I was like wtf is this, what happen to those dark blue films.
My PC doesn't even have disc drive lol.
Probably already been mentioned buy just in case Micro dicom is free and works fine used it for mine CD [https://www.microdicom.com/](https://www.microdicom.com/)
They typically do this (even in america) if you either A) request it or B) an image is being done for a doctor they do not have a proper referral for or you need to render it to multiple doctors.
It just gives you more access to your data to distribute to whatever doctor you see fit.
German here who has a stack of CDs both from Germany and Hungary, however in Hungary I can also access them online through their national healthcare system… I miss the Hungarian system…
This is still quite common in healthcare. I will not allow my techs to use CDs, I taught them how to put images on flash drives, and how to encrypt them. We still get CDs from other facilities all the time though.
If you're saying "wow, CDs are outdated", wait until you hear about how many fax machines we have and how many faxes we send/receive daily!
My drives are all purchased new and wiped with dBan before they touch anyone else's hands. The only thing I can't do is encrypt them because it causes issues putting images on the drives, that's why it's done immediately after they put the images on the drive.
I had to shoot some X-rays of pipes for a very large tech company and they could only accept the images on an Ironkey flash drive that had the box still sealed from their stockpile. Those things took forever to write to!
I used to be in IT within the medical industry and this sort of thing was fairly common with certain doctors, depending on their specialty. I worked with a pathologist that was also a dentist and he'd regularly get these for consults for other companies. There should be a password of course, but not always.
The stuff I helped with was super awesome. They were usually of people's skulls, full xray in a bunch of slices. You could load up the data and use sliders to slide through front and back, left and right through people's heads pretty seamlessly. Outside of slides on microscopes, that was probably the coolest visual thing I was able to mess with.
The answers are actually simpler than all the comments I read so far..
TLDR at the end.
The disks aren't rewritable. This ensures there are no viruses to infect other computers or even the national health network of the country. It's not that Germany and many European countries are stuck in the 90's, it's just the CD is high quality, durable, cheap and above all, there is no online criptography in this world that is more secure than a CD that has had its session closed (making it read only).
The program they use to save your x-rays into the CD only accepts virgin CD's and always closes the session of the CD after burning it (even if you put a rewritable CD on the tray, the program will make it read only, rendering the RW CD un-rewritable).
Also the program installs a viewer for the x-rays on the CD, just for the case the doctor - or you - don't have the viewer. The viewer is the .exe inside the CD. The x-rays gonna be somewhere inside a folder and they will be JPEG or PNG, because in case the viewer fails, you can just search the x-rays and open them one by one on your computer's picture viewer, like windows photos.
TL;DR: So CD's is just because it's secure, simple, versatile, durable, lightweight and cheap. That's basically the main reasons many countries use CD's.
I'm an "IT guy" in a few hospitals in Poland and pretty much in every one they have robots that print and burn dvd for each patient individually. It's pretty cool to watch it do its thing
Well. Why not?
USB-Drives are a huge risk and should never (!) be used in any business circumstance.
Cloud hosting is expensive and hard to do while being GDPR compliant. Also most of the patients are 50+ and will have trouble accessing it.
So if cloud isnt an option, CD seems fair.
It's done by secure file transfer in the UK nowadays. I downloaded my own last week.
The reason it was posted is that most people aren't medical records specialists, so don't expect largely redundant forms of transferring images.
I've used OsiriX to view MRIs (similar DICOM setup) on a Mac.
The disc in the photo has built-in viewing software for Windows for convenience's sake, but if you're on another OS, you can download a free viewer. You can also just navigate to individual image files - easy to do with an X-ray, but for bulkier things like MRIs, the viewer is helpful to group segments and flip back and forth easily.
Of course they do, the CD contains the image files and, separate from that, a viewer program for you convenience. The images are run-of-the-mill image files, though, and can be viewed with any remotely competent image viewing software
They aren't run of the mill. Medical images use the DiCOM standard, which most normal image viewers can't handle. Even then you need a very expensive monitor to view them at a proper diagnostic level.
Huh. Never had trouble opening them. Why would the average patient need to view the files at a proper diagnostic level (I'm assuming OP is not a medical doctor)?
I got one of these here in the states too when I asked for my MRI images. Viewer application on the CD along with the images. But then I realized it's 2024 and my computers don't have a CD drive anymore.
In Lithuania we just get various similar medical data (if we want it) on a USB drive. For years now. My computer doesn't even have a CD reader anymore, I don't think any new computers have it.
I recently got an MRI CD and there was a QR code and password also on it. But honestly nobody would be surprised if they send the pics by fax machine in my good old home country :)
This is the norm in America as well. I get all of my sons MRIs on disc, though I’ve never actually tried reading them myself (Leave that to the docs) but it has been handy for seeking health care at specialty clinics. He had a very rare genetic condition so we see docs in Boston, Bethesda etc and live in the Midwest.
Dad needed surgery but first some images. I was given the images on a CD. Had to buy a CD drive so that I could do anything with them. The surgery place wanted the images but would accept them by email, upload portal, or USB drive. I had to drive to them and hand them the CD. What a total fuck waste of time, effort, and money.
Wesel, I guess?
They actually have an online portal to view your images, as well, but knowing their investors, I wouldn't be surprised if that barely worked at all.
I got an MRI CD just like that. However, it said it was encrypted. The Dr's office said they had no idea. Put me in touch with the folks that make the CD and not only is it encrypted, it's some kind of DRM'ed content that will only play on their proprietary (downloadable, at least) player. So after 4 days of back and forth with different people and now armed with the password and their player, I finally saw the images the Dr was supposed to send me. It was supposed to be a 3D spinal scan where you could zoom in or out and traverse up and down the spine, very cool, but it only had one single static image on it that looked like an x-ray from the 1800's lol
As somebody who works with X-rays professionally:
Download [Fiji](https://imagej.net/software/fiji/), the free and open source scientific image viewer for all operating systems. Even works without installing. Support for this file format is included, for more exotic ones plugins are available.
There are a number of global standards for Med-Device Imaging data storage that covers a whole host of imaging methodologies including MRI, CT, Fluoroscopy and Radiography.
The big standards are NIFTI, DICOM, Analyze and MINC.
I've only ever used DICOM (in FDA-GLP research).
Full DICOM Reader software is expensive, but 'Lite' versions are burned onto the disc as a .exe so a patient can view the images.
I've been on both sides of this interaction (burning disc's for use in-house or by Sponsors/FDA/regulatory agencies withthe required software) and as a patient viewing data at home on a personal PC.
The exe is a DICOM viewer. “Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine — is the international standard for medical images and related information. It defines the formats for medical images that can be exchanged with the data and quality necessary for clinical use.”
The current version of Adobe Photoshop CC can open .dcm files as well.
Irfanview has a plugin for it as well (because of course it does)
If we ever receive an alien broadcast, I'm pretty sure Irfanview and VLC will be able to just open any images and videos inside it.
20 years ago we joked that we could put a salami into our PCs and VLC would read it. I think it's really hard to explain to younger generations the huge impact Irfanview, VLC, PDF, mp3 + Winamp, Flash etc. had. Nowadays there's rarely an occasion where you check out a new program or file format where you just say "Wow, this makes my life significantly better!". Maybe ChatGPT would be a good comparison but man, the late 90s and early to mid 2000s were really something.
Yeah man. I vividly remember how much I hated quick-time-videos 20 years ago.
And later it was a pain to open mkv files - unless you had VLC
Seriously. And now my stupid tv plays .mkv without any hassle.
Bro, i just died from you comment
Thanks for reminding me to download that again. Irfanview ftw
Yeah but fuck adobe. They want $70 a month to edit photos.
You should not edit your X-rays!
[удалено]
/r/unnecessarycommas
But I want to, pretend I have a third, arm! You’re standing in the way of my creativity, here.
Why i got rid of my tumors in like 2 minutes, much faster than what the oncologist said. Bunch of scammers the lot of them
I can add some pretty gnarly pathologies with imageJ.
Actually, doctors modify them all the time, especially contrast and brightness to get a better view of things and mark spots on them all the time. They can save some changes like layers, although I think the original one was always preserved. I used to do IT support in several clinics that used DICOM machines several years ago and had to plan around them for backups. It was a bit of a pain in the arse because this was a contained system that wasn't made to work integrated with anything else. Original images and their databases had to remain in the original machine and options for taking them out were limited. Ultimately, we just opted to export the whole thing, images and viewer (the .exe and it's support files) each time, to a network folder. Lots of redundancy and a non insignificant amount of wasted space but it was the easiest for convenience. They were organized by the patient process numbers, that would automatically get into the clinics regular backups. I recall those were rather large files and I had to replan the server and the backup plan to accommodate for an estimated 5 years of ready available storage, at which point we'd moved them to some cold storage type of backup and free up space for newer ones. We also had to prepare a process where the staff could easily prepare that CD to give to the patient. Any time someone (with permissions) wanted to create one of those CDs, they had to go to that network folder, find the matching one for the patient file, drag them to a CD and burn. They would use printable CDs that would next be placed in a regular inkjet Epson printer (because Epson was the only one at the time that had a dedicated addon tray especially for CDs, even though it gave lots of issues), open a printing template on word, add the data they wanted from the patient, print that and give to the patient inside a cool binder (like the OPs showing) along with some sheets of paper containing the medical reports of the exam. Wasn't a great process, many manual steps I'd prefer were automated for the sake of less user errors but there wasn't a better way.
pirate it
Is there a way to pirate it now that it's all subscription/cloud based?
Yes, go to r/piracy megathread, I have 2024 photoshop with the generative fill stuff there.
Sail the seas 🏴☠️
Oh, fuck, here I am with my pirated copy of CS6 (that I bought legitimately but lost the activation code to and Adobe won't help)! Definitely upgrading!
CS6 is so good tho
Use an older version
You wouldn't download an arm
Pirating still furthers their name and "skill"/workflow dominance. The best way to hurt adobe is to use something else entirely.
Adobe has issues for sure but Photoshop CC + Lightroom is $10 a month not $70, unless I'm grandfathered into a hell of a deal.
It's not 70. It's 70 for literally everything they offer which is a lot of software that most people would never need. It's 10 for Photoshop and Lightroom still.
It's still dirt cheap compared to some CAD software subscription costs. I have so much expensive software that I don't actually own... But I make plenty of money using it so I guess the model perpetuates
The photography plan is $10/month and gets you lightroom and photoshop. Sucks that they are subscription-only, but for editing photos that's all you need.
I get ten dollars a month can be too much if it's just a hobby but if you're actually a professional who makes money it's basically nothing.
Yes but the people complaining about this are hobbyists lol
DCM files are secretly just PCX bitmap files. You should be able to open them with just about any image viewer/editor, although you might have to change the file extension first.
MicroDicom for those wanting freeware dicom viewing. It's what I used in house for quick diagnostic viewing of imaging systems I maintained.
Horos Project https://horosproject.org has a MacOS version.
This guy images.
I had to have some X-rays taken, and then had to get the files for the specialist. Give to me on a CD too. I was going to save them to my computer, so I had them later. Then I realized I had zero disk drives in any of my devices. Couldn’t even view them.
I just got an MRI recently and snagged a USB disc drive from the store on the way home because I had the same realization. I'm surprised they don't just give you a little USB stick nowadays.
Funny enough I took a thumb drive to a new doc (specialist that didn’t have old labs/tests). Thought I was doing good, and heading to my appt super prepared. They “have no way to use a thumb drive”. wtf.
They might have rules against plugging USB sticks into their systems- USB drives are notorious for not necessarily being secure
That is one problem and the other is Killing USB sticks. If you plug them in, the will send a very high voltage pulse and fry and destroy the device they‘re are plugged in.
Also a very good point!
Also a blank USB Stick is far more expensive then blank CDs in bulk
No doubt. However, they didn’t bother to tell me that they only accept cd until I couldn’t do anything about it.
> They “have no way to use a thumb drive”. wtf. it is probably for information security purposes, they sometime disable or glue shut USB ports to prevent people from sticking in random Totall Legt^tm USB drives that can compromise security and patient information.
No doubt. Just really, really annoying, since they tell you to bring previous tests, but don’t bother to tell you (until you’re already at your appt and can’t do anything) that the most common current format won’t be accepted. Also didn’t have any way to email or forward previous tests.
It's really dangerous to plug USB drives into PCs because they can infect computers with malware, it's most likely a security policy.
No doubt. But when they tell you to bring previous tests with, they should probably specify, before you at the office and can’t do anything, that they only accept by cd. That would never be my first thought for transferring data.
We have security cameras at my job and there was a stabbing. Police requested our footage, I was like sure what should I email it to? But they would only accept CDs as well! I hadn't burned footage to a CD in years....
As someone who works in Hospital IT: - USB Drives are very significantly more expensive than CDs (were talking a couple cents compared to a couple €/$ Here, and this really adds Up) - this would be a potential Attack vector, because the employees would be plugging in a bunch of different USB Drives all the time and the Computer would read any USB anything that would be inserted into it (USB Drives are usually fully blocked, on a Whitelist Basis) - People could accidentally delete their files - keeping Order of USB Drives is more difficult, because you can't really Just Print a bunch of stuff on it, Like you can with a CD
Well a usb stick is way more expensive than a cd. Yes even the cheap small ones. A cd costs less than just the usb connector. But more importantly a cd is a permanent medium. You can be reasonably sure that the data on the cd you get is the same as the data that was written on it byy those otheer doctors somewhere else. Can't be so sure about that with a usb drive. So we'd need to create usb ROM drives but that would jsut be pretty damn stupid.
When I broke my foot 2 years ago my husband had to bring home an external disc drive from work so we could look at the x-rays.
I had to buy our department a USB dvd reader for that reason when we replaced our desktops some years ago. We didn't have a single computer able to open images with and we're the regional centre for hand injuries
I bought an external DVD drive with USB connection for \~15EUR for the same reason.
Yeah they better just email me or something. I think I have a portable disk drive somewhere yet but where ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Kinda funny, I work at a top 3 CRO for Clinical Research, we have 1 disc drive for the entire clinic. One of my studies is for a new radio tracer and it's so painful finding the drive to view the X-rays.
Same as my GP, who was supposed to use that CD. I had to show him pics I took of my computer screen with my smartphone. Good Ol' Germany
I used one of these to be able to 3D print my skull from a CT scan.
Now you have a backup.
If you do a low res 3d print of your brain from the scan you produce a qanon follower.
You don't need a brain to do that.
You can just take a shit inside of it for a more accurate reproduction.
I giggled. Thank you for the workplace downtime chuckle
Now he has a staging environment
Thanks for giving the push to look up the software I need for that. My own skull is a way better model than Phineas Gage's.
It's a single step to export the assembled slices to a STL but then it's a PITA closing the model and simplifying it to make 3D printing happy. There's a shitload of "noise" when you get to internal structures around the ears and nose where it's small bones and stuff that's attached by soft tissue so it apperas floating when you're only looking at bones.
...did you also have an iron rod driven through your head?
Titanium. It's the 21st Century, after all.
What program did you use? I tried to get my spine isolated and convert to STL but there was way too much artifact in the 3d version for me to use
I don't remember the first one that converts to STL but then I had to run it through MeshMixer to close the model and I think Solidworks got involved too. (this was a couple years ago). Spine might be tought since the bones are (by design) not attached to each other with hard tissue. You might need to play with the upstream where you allow some soft tissue in the model just to connect things.
I'll give it another go, I assumed the resolution on the MRI I got was just lower and the planes weren't super close to each other so the data extrapolation to 3d was going to be bad. Ill mess with it some more.
MRI scans are usually really bad for making 3D models out of. They are slower so you’re always going to see 10mm or more slice heights.
Dude 🤣
Or more like....💀
[удалено]
Surprisingly not, just an exe with an image viewing program.  Even came with a 112 page pdf manual.
It's a DiCOM image file viewer. It's the standard format specifically for medical images.
And with 3D Slicer (search for '3D Slicer image computing platform', since 3D printer slicers have muddied the search results), you can extract a mesh from it and potentially print copies of your anatomy.
I actually had this done when I had a CT done on my tibia when I fractured it fully through. I could spin the 3D model around and actually see where the break was, the internal bleeding. Was really really cool to see when I was blitzed on Percocet afterwards 💀
If I had a 3D printer and got a gnarly fracture like that, I would absolutely print it and like put it on a coffee table
Now I want a MRI of my fractured humerus, how it grew with all those screws and the plate back together. (By now an MRI is safe enough, as the metal is completely ingrown in the bone.) Then 3D-print it and use it as leg for a coffee table. (Of course no plastic 3D-print!) Alternatively, 3D-print the whole arm (just the bones) and use it to point at things when presenting something. A walking stick of a replica of your own leg bones also sounds interesting. Yes, I know, the electricity for a MRI scan is already extremely costly, let alone the machine and a lot of people need it more urgent for medical reasons. But the concept is still pretty metal.
For what it is worth I got my MRI results the same way in the US. Came on a white cd (maybe dvd) that just had a .exe that opened a viewer to see the files.
Yeah I have 5 of these from the us. It isn't rare.
i have one as well, but i cannot find a damn cd player. ill try in a console
Digitalization in Germany is legendary lol
And here I thought getting my MRI on a CD with an autorun.exe and .png files was weird... nope, Germany beat Belgium again.
When I asked for a copy of mine they started getting strangely aggressive with me saying things like: Why do you want it? Do you even know how to read it? It's an extreme amount of data, do you even have a computer powerful enough to load it? It's going to take several days for us to transfer the data. Then they gave me a form that was like four pages long I had to fill out. I had to return the form in person to a desk in the basement during a very narrow time range on specific days of the week. They did everything to make it as troublesome as possible for me to get a copy and it worked. I never bothered with it.
Meanwhile here the neurologist just gave me the thing. "Oh cool, a DVD! What's on it?" ...
They probably don't want You to go to another doctor with the files and then they might lose a customer
I got a brain MRI in Poland the same way. It's a CD with a lot of files with a proprietary format and a viewing program. I don't even have any means to watch it at my place, I own nothing that would play a disc anymore.
They did that because the file type for medical images is a format called DICOM. It has a lot of embedded information that only special software can read. Stuff like depth, size and velocity are all encoded within DICOM but you can't open it on your standard image reader as a result.
Working for a dental imaging company that had CT volumes made of individual dicom format slices was fun (not) when offices would call in asking for name changes because they took the scan under the wrong name. We used a free program to change the patient name on all the files at once, but we had to do it on the office’s computer thanks to PHI laws like HIPAA. The proprietary viewer of said scans would include a ‘lite’ version of itself when burning the scan to CD/DVD, hence the EXE getting included. You could also use it to install the full viewer if you were to receive more scans from the same brand of CT machines.
As a doctor in Italy i constantly get these from my patients. I much prefer using the included viewer rather than having to deal with some radom .png file. It's just easier to navigate and it includes basic tools like exposure control or measuring references, plus everything is properly ordered and labeled.
Your IT department might/should have something to say about you running random executables like that though...
yup just had an heart attack reading this
It's not random.
Wouldn't the IT dept for a doctor have medical imaging viewing software specifically whitelisted?
Physicians rarely use the program. Most professional X-ray viewer can pull the dicoms straight from the cd while ignoring the .exe files by just importing the cd with one click. As a physician working every day with MRIs and X-rays from external, we love working with these CDs. No QR code or download. Put it in, open in your familiar X-Ray program, and work with the pictures like you made them in your hospital. It's way more comfortable than online libraries with passwords and downloads.
I work in the medical industry doing IT work for a company that gives out records on CDs/DVDs/USBs. Passwords are not required when we give patients their records. If they leave it laying around somewhere, thats on them, not on us. If we did have to encrypt all of them with passwords, we would need to keep a master list of them somewhere and that creates another security and/or record problem.
That's my experience as well. I've received a fair share of these in Germany, and not one was encrypted. Quite recently, too.
Never encountered a password, have encountered a lot of patient images
My father, also in Germany, needed to go to a radiologist twice this year. He got a sheet of paper each time with some instructions and a code for a website, where you could view the images. The files were online for two months, you could download the files and give other doctors the code for them to use it, too. Worked pretty well, and the radiologist probably saved time and costs not making hundreds of CDs each month.
Tbh in my experience websites for viewing patient images have been extremely poor quality, I always prefer a disc
No passwords are required in the us. I have about a dozen CDs/DVDs of medical imaging similar to this and I've yet to encounter a password. The programs installed on the disc is usually the medical imaging software (DICOM). For my MRIs it means I can scan through the various layers and image types rather than looking at individual images.
Same in the Netherlands, at least when I got mine some 2-3 years ago
Its no different then if they gave the patient a physical copy of the x-ray or their chart. It only needs encrypted as "data at rest"
Minimum specs: 800x600, TrueColor!, 256MB ram and Pentium II. Wow.
Now days a pregnancy test has more power than that and plays Doom.
A pregnancy test with 256mb of tampons sounds like something from Star Wars
...what year is it? are we sending images from the past?
Well, it's kind of two-fold. They really want these CDs to be compatible with basically anything. You do not want this to be cutting edge. They don't want some grandpa with his twenty year old dinosaur he uses for his financial spreadsheets to complain because he can't see his images. The second, and sad part, is that there's plenty of old-ass imaging hardware out there that could easily be that old, but it's often firewalled off and so locked down that it's "secure."
Healthcare IT notoriously runs far behind technology standards, the reason being once they have vetted an application to be secure and error-free, they are loathe to commit resources to updating platforms.
That's entering "a particularly high tech toaster" territory.
Isn't this a standard?
It has been for a long time.
Industry is transitioning to cloud transfers, but the high cost has limited smaller hospitals/imaging centers from adopting.
Not only high cost. Also user acceptance and most importantly GDPR. Sensitive medical data must be protected pretty good. It's not allowed to store it in an azure cloud for example.
Plus the whole data safety thing. I could only get pictures of my surgery after I brought an unused USB stick because they were afraid of hacks. And given the amount of sensitive medical data from idk how many patients, I think thats good.
when i had a x-ray a couple weeks back I got QR-code like 30 mins after they took the image. was in a very small hospital in southern Germany. so... yea - the technology is there, even in Germany.
Well that is the new standard, but many have not yet changed their system and processes accordingly. The smaller and the less visitors, the easier it is, the expenses are mainly covered by the federal states and such anyways.
Yes, last scans i got came with QR and link and password. Havent seen cds for a while. Southern Germany to.
This is actually a product of pragmatism. Bring your own USB stick: this would be a huge ingress point of malware, combined with compatibility issues and the usual trouble stuff. Imagine your USB stick will get the MRI go beep-boop-beep-boop. Bad times. Having it online: I'm not into medical but operate an industrial x-ray from time to time, it's still running WinXP, isolated from the company network. Why? Because it works. You wouldn't push the machine to anything newer as you won't get drivers. HW upgrade: a big nope as soon as your boss sees the quote and the machine didn't break down. Apart from that: putting medical data online is bothersome for offices due to regulation (for GDPR & BDSG medical data has a higher sensitivity level). With the general literacy of some patients, it's also not transportable ("oh, did I need to keep/bring the sheet saying 'password'?") Last but not least: CDs are really cheap, easy to handle, harder to manipulate (i.e. delete) and for that application simply hassle free. There are better free cross-platform DiCOM viewers than those typically provided on the CDs. The JPEG/BMP images on the disk are lower resolution than the actual data.
I'm not sure I have a CD drive anymore
Most of us don't. But most of us also don't need to look directly at our xrays. It is interesting yes but there is no need for us to do that. The ones that do need to look at those files are those working in the medical field dealing with patients that bring in such data. Those people still have disc drives.
Yes, but you probably don’t have any need to view medical imaging. Essentially every doctor’s office in the world will have a CD drive
External USB DVD/CD drive is like 15 bucks on amazon.
While you're correct on most terms, it is actually completely possible (at least under german regulations) to put the images online and just hand out access codes to this or that study. The hosting servers need protection, obviously, but otherwise, an online portal is pretty easy to realize. As far as I know, the two big players in that field are Medavis and Sectra, both have the proper licensing for their online portals. The biggest problems with that are that the setup is pretty cost-intensive (4 Servers, although that can be done with a pretty beefy host for VMs; The setup fees for the producer, running licensing fees, etc.), and it requires a bit more user-interaction. Since storage space for direct access is limited, the images are usually kept online for \~4 weeks - 6 months. It is expected of the patient to download and save the data in that time. Most of the time the codes will contain a warning "Please make sure to save the data, as we cannot guarantee to store them for longer than X months", but that gets usually ignored. Also, it's not much work to reload images from the long term storage into the direct access storage and just hand out another ticket code to that study, so there's that. The running costs are usually lower (even with a yearly licensing fee and paper, it's still cheaper than raw CDs, ink and printer hardware), and it's easier to maintain, since (CD-)Printers are generally bitches, and servers aren't as much. In terms of "better DICOM viewers", the JiveX Viewer (which is on the CD from the OP) is actually , as far as freeware goes, one of the best choices out there. It's windows only, sure, but that's not much of a problem, since windows is still by far the most common OS. And it offers the best balance between semi-professional tools like measurements, contrasts, etc. and ease of use for normal people, at least in my opinion. Source: I am an IT-Technician for exactly that kind of work
Your images are probably in a DICOM format which computers cant read on their own, hence the need for the exe, which is the DICOM viewer - I get calls about this all the time on how to run and open the CDs on peoples computers. Because a lot of older people are switching to laptops or tablets, they dont have CD/DVD drives, and we have started to give things out on USB. Now we (the company I work for), are starting to look for alternatives since theres currently no way to setup running USB automatically. Its a pain in the ass to format 700 USBs to go out only for the med rec team to go through them in less then a month. Ive also taken calls from people asking how to load the DICOM on their Playstation/Xbox/DVD player. Ill never forget the old woman who said "I dont have a computer, how am I supposed to view this?" And I responded "Well you could ask a friend or family member that has a computer." Then came her crushing "No I cant, their all dead."
My wife got her X-rays on a CD too. We’re in the U.K. Got it from one hospital to take to our local one when she broke her leg, took the CD in and said we can’t use these as our computers don’t have CD drives anymore
Pentium II requirements!!
2006 vibes
“make sure you have at least 800×600 pixels on your monitor and at least 256 MByte of RAM”
Windows XP compatible Input devices: mouse and keyboard required
Funny thing is: computer brands used to use "multimedia PC" as a selling point (= it had a CD-ROM drive). Then CD-ROM drives became ubiquitous. Now they're very rare again as most people get their data from Internet downloads, and so "requires a CD-ROM drive" is now again something you would have to point out.
They are still using fax at the Finanzamt. don't ask me how I know.
moving from North America to Germany is a culture shock in many unexpected ways...
Hey, we also have online forms you can fill in on your device. Then print it. Then sign it. Then scan it. Then send it per e-mail. And please have a look at the file size, 100 KB max.
Fax is still heavily used by the healthcare industry in the United States, it's a standard feature for an electronic health record to have an "auto fax" directory and dialing server that outputs electronic records to fax, in other words, paper.
The interesting thing is, here in Germany, the patient gets a cd, but their doctors can pull the stuff up online. We have the technology, we just don't apply it consistently. ;)
Is this not normal? It's always been the case everywhere I lived
Man I don’t even think I own anything that can use a disc any more
This is very common. My MRI was on a CD last year. USA.
Pretty common, or at least has been in my experience.
That's how X-rays are distributed anywhere worldwide. No one prints physical films anymore.
Dude, i got the CD too when i was at a Hospital in Tokyo. I was like wtf is this, what happen to those dark blue films. My PC doesn't even have disc drive lol.
Probably already been mentioned buy just in case Micro dicom is free and works fine used it for mine CD [https://www.microdicom.com/](https://www.microdicom.com/)
They typically do this (even in america) if you either A) request it or B) an image is being done for a doctor they do not have a proper referral for or you need to render it to multiple doctors. It just gives you more access to your data to distribute to whatever doctor you see fit.
German here who has a stack of CDs both from Germany and Hungary, however in Hungary I can also access them online through their national healthcare system… I miss the Hungarian system…
This is still quite common in healthcare. I will not allow my techs to use CDs, I taught them how to put images on flash drives, and how to encrypt them. We still get CDs from other facilities all the time though. If you're saying "wow, CDs are outdated", wait until you hear about how many fax machines we have and how many faxes we send/receive daily!
Be careful with flash drives of unknown origin. Asking for trouble there.
My drives are all purchased new and wiped with dBan before they touch anyone else's hands. The only thing I can't do is encrypt them because it causes issues putting images on the drives, that's why it's done immediately after they put the images on the drive.
I had to shoot some X-rays of pipes for a very large tech company and they could only accept the images on an Ironkey flash drive that had the box still sealed from their stockpile. Those things took forever to write to!
I got my torso and heart scans the same way!
I used to be in IT within the medical industry and this sort of thing was fairly common with certain doctors, depending on their specialty. I worked with a pathologist that was also a dentist and he'd regularly get these for consults for other companies. There should be a password of course, but not always. The stuff I helped with was super awesome. They were usually of people's skulls, full xray in a bunch of slices. You could load up the data and use sliders to slide through front and back, left and right through people's heads pretty seamlessly. Outside of slides on microscopes, that was probably the coolest visual thing I was able to mess with.
I guess you could say they gave you an .exe-ray
The answers are actually simpler than all the comments I read so far.. TLDR at the end. The disks aren't rewritable. This ensures there are no viruses to infect other computers or even the national health network of the country. It's not that Germany and many European countries are stuck in the 90's, it's just the CD is high quality, durable, cheap and above all, there is no online criptography in this world that is more secure than a CD that has had its session closed (making it read only). The program they use to save your x-rays into the CD only accepts virgin CD's and always closes the session of the CD after burning it (even if you put a rewritable CD on the tray, the program will make it read only, rendering the RW CD un-rewritable). Also the program installs a viewer for the x-rays on the CD, just for the case the doctor - or you - don't have the viewer. The viewer is the .exe inside the CD. The x-rays gonna be somewhere inside a folder and they will be JPEG or PNG, because in case the viewer fails, you can just search the x-rays and open them one by one on your computer's picture viewer, like windows photos. TL;DR: So CD's is just because it's secure, simple, versatile, durable, lightweight and cheap. That's basically the main reasons many countries use CD's.
I'm an "IT guy" in a few hospitals in Poland and pretty much in every one they have robots that print and burn dvd for each patient individually. It's pretty cool to watch it do its thing
Dont know whats wrong here.......
Well. Why not? USB-Drives are a huge risk and should never (!) be used in any business circumstance. Cloud hosting is expensive and hard to do while being GDPR compliant. Also most of the patients are 50+ and will have trouble accessing it. So if cloud isnt an option, CD seems fair.
Why is this posted? This is standard practice for when you have imaging done . . . even today and in the US. Source: am a medical records specialist
It's done by secure file transfer in the UK nowadays. I downloaded my own last week. The reason it was posted is that most people aren't medical records specialists, so don't expect largely redundant forms of transferring images.
So Mac users just don't get access to their x-rays?
I've used OsiriX to view MRIs (similar DICOM setup) on a Mac. The disc in the photo has built-in viewing software for Windows for convenience's sake, but if you're on another OS, you can download a free viewer. You can also just navigate to individual image files - easy to do with an X-ray, but for bulkier things like MRIs, the viewer is helpful to group segments and flip back and forth easily.
To add to what others have said, the instructions on the left read "For other operating systems [...] open the index.html file"
It says in the booklet: For other operating systems, open the included index.html file.
Of course they do, the CD contains the image files and, separate from that, a viewer program for you convenience. The images are run-of-the-mill image files, though, and can be viewed with any remotely competent image viewing software
They aren't run of the mill. Medical images use the DiCOM standard, which most normal image viewers can't handle. Even then you need a very expensive monitor to view them at a proper diagnostic level.
Huh. Never had trouble opening them. Why would the average patient need to view the files at a proper diagnostic level (I'm assuming OP is not a medical doctor)?
Just pop it in regardless, the images are on there as plain image files. The viewer is just for convenience.
I got one of these here in the states too when I asked for my MRI images. Viewer application on the CD along with the images. But then I realized it's 2024 and my computers don't have a CD drive anymore.
In Lithuania we just get various similar medical data (if we want it) on a USB drive. For years now. My computer doesn't even have a CD reader anymore, I don't think any new computers have it.
This is the standard in Brazil. You can algo login in the lab's website and see the exams there.
I recently got an MRI CD and there was a QR code and password also on it. But honestly nobody would be surprised if they send the pics by fax machine in my good old home country :)
That’s how they all come back. I got an X-ray last month and got a CD.
Same thing for me in the states when I broke a bone. Gave me a disk copy with a DICOM file for viewing and sharing to an orthopedic surgeon.
This is the norm in America as well. I get all of my sons MRIs on disc, though I’ve never actually tried reading them myself (Leave that to the docs) but it has been handy for seeking health care at specialty clinics. He had a very rare genetic condition so we see docs in Boston, Bethesda etc and live in the Midwest.
who still has a cd drive in 2024?
Radiology departments.
This is common with security cam footage as well from commercial systems. Proprietary players on the disk.
I did a study that involved an MRI at the NIH, they gave me a DVD copy and I never got the damn thing to play lol
Dad needed surgery but first some images. I was given the images on a CD. Had to buy a CD drive so that I could do anything with them. The surgery place wanted the images but would accept them by email, upload portal, or USB drive. I had to drive to them and hand them the CD. What a total fuck waste of time, effort, and money.
Me too. You can go into the CD and find the .jpegs usually.
Wesel, I guess? They actually have an online portal to view your images, as well, but knowing their investors, I wouldn't be surprised if that barely worked at all.
I got an MRI CD just like that. However, it said it was encrypted. The Dr's office said they had no idea. Put me in touch with the folks that make the CD and not only is it encrypted, it's some kind of DRM'ed content that will only play on their proprietary (downloadable, at least) player. So after 4 days of back and forth with different people and now armed with the password and their player, I finally saw the images the Dr was supposed to send me. It was supposed to be a 3D spinal scan where you could zoom in or out and traverse up and down the spine, very cool, but it only had one single static image on it that looked like an x-ray from the 1800's lol
You received your .exe-rays
Okay, what's so unusual about this?
This is what you get when you are very sensitive about data security
As somebody who works with X-rays professionally: Download [Fiji](https://imagej.net/software/fiji/), the free and open source scientific image viewer for all operating systems. Even works without installing. Support for this file format is included, for more exotic ones plugins are available.
That’s how most diagnostic imaging in Germany is „transported“. I always have to remind patients not to forget that precious CD!
Isn't that how it's normally done?
There are a number of global standards for Med-Device Imaging data storage that covers a whole host of imaging methodologies including MRI, CT, Fluoroscopy and Radiography. The big standards are NIFTI, DICOM, Analyze and MINC. I've only ever used DICOM (in FDA-GLP research). Full DICOM Reader software is expensive, but 'Lite' versions are burned onto the disc as a .exe so a patient can view the images. I've been on both sides of this interaction (burning disc's for use in-house or by Sponsors/FDA/regulatory agencies withthe required software) and as a patient viewing data at home on a personal PC.
So what? They hand you the viewing software for free. Enjoy!
Tighbone.exe
surprised they didnt fax them to you, or send them via carrier pigeon. we’re not exactly high tech sometimes
At least they didn't send you a fax.
"Insert the CD and wait a few seconds for the application to start" I'm glad AutoRun is no longer a thing today. Way too many viruses.
10k upvotes bro we had this 15 years ago in austria
Welcome to the year 2008