Pukka-j’s Solution Keeps Pace with Growing Complexity of Functional Imaging.

As data handling and storage in the area of functional imaging becomes more and more complex, Pukka-j now provides a hardware  archiving solution to complement the tried and tested DICOM, web and HL7 software products designed specifically to handle Nuclear Medicine workflow. The latest Pukka-j hardware products provide a complete solution for a Functional Imaging Store, Web View, Distribution and Management System for SPECT/CT, PET/CT SPECT/MR, NM and CT data.  

Pukka-j’s solution for handling functional imaging data sets provides intelligent data and user management where all data is easily accessible on-line at anytime by the users and the imaging department workflow is fully automated.  The solution itself is a stand-alone system that connects directly to the functional imaging scanners and their workstations.   The solution typically co-exists with a radiology PACS/RIS and prevents functional imaging data being compromised to fit within a non-functional imaging system. For large datasets, the solution eliminates the blocks and slow performance from transfer of data across the busy PACS network.  For instances where electronic patient record systems exist in hospitals Pukka-j integrates with the EPR system by configuring web services which allow a wider audience to share and view the specialist data outside of the functional imaging departments. The server solution retains all data as lossless studies and, in addition, automatically creates a copy of the data, which can be converted to multiple frame jpegs or lossy wavelet compressed data ready for standard pc access.  In this respect, Pukka-j works closely with the customer to deliver a solution that is tailored specifically for their imaging needs to provide the most automated, cost effective and robust method for managing functional imaging data.  The system is fully scalable and satisfies the output demand from multi-hospital environments.

For instance, a typical functional imaging store of 60TB would consist of the latest Intel Xeon 5500 Quad Core dual processor server, featuring enhanced memory capacity of 8GB to 16GB and turbo database performance.   The server controls multiple daisy-chained units of Direct Attached Storage (DAS) resulting in the load being spread across physically separate arrays, which makes it ideal for high data capacity applications and users.

For large disk enclosures, Pukka-j configures a higher level of RAID 50 with an option for a hot swap disk to provide a safety net to the data; therefore, a 60TB Image Store server provides a usable capacity of 48TB.  By default, a lossless compression is applied to all stored DICOM data, providing a conservative 2:1 saving on disk so that 48TB will easily store 96TB of imaging data.

Kevin Wilson, Technical Director, Pukka-j comments:

The staggering pace of hardware technology development now means a one hundred terabyte store is classed as a mini-PACS and is positioned as an affordable solution to specialist imaging departments. The hardware capability has overtaken the image data capacity requirements of any imaging environment and challenges the limitations of storage offered by hospital PACS. Pukka-j works closely with our customers to select and bespoke build the hardware in order to fulfil each individual project specification.

Another feature of the image store hardware is a highly robust on-line disaster recovery service.   All data residing on the primary store server is automatically copied and routed to a secondary store server.   For full resilience, Pukka-j recommends the primary store to be housed in a physically separate location to the secondary back-up store.   In cases where there is more than one hospital hosting the service, the configuration of each store server is set to act as both a primary and secondary server via Pukka-j’s ability to build multiple DICOM services and databases within the same server environment.   The back-up server partition significantly improves the redundancy of both image stores and allows server capacity to be shared across multiple sites.