The full benefits of a PACS system cannot be achieved by a departmental system, as films must still be made to service referring physicians and clinics. Therefore, a full hospital PACS must provide workstations throughout the hospital which are connected to the central file server and database, but which present `clinical' views of radiological data. In contrast to the radiologist, the clinician needs to select examinations from a `patient list' which presents the results of his/her radiology referrals. The most important data for the clinician is the radiology report, which must be immediately available upon selection of the examination. The images themselves, perhaps with annotations provided by the reading radiologist, must also be available in a few seconds from selection. Furthermore, the ability to display radiologist selected relevant historical images along with the new examination is necessary in those instances where the radiologist felt that certain historical images were important in the interpretation and diagnosis of the patient. Therefore, views of the new and historical data along clinical lines, conference preparation features, and modality and body part specific selections are also required to successfully implement a full hospital PACS. This paper describes the concepts for image selection and presentation at PACS workstations, both `diagnostic' workstations within the radiology department and `clinical' workstations which support the rest of the hospital and outpatient clinics.
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