OT: Image database software for EKGs

[Skrawny]

You guys seem to know a lot about a lot (or think you do ;) ) so I figured I'd take a shot here...

My project:
------------------------------------
I have a huge stash of EKGs that I would like to scan and organize as a teaching/learning tool for med students, residents and fellows.

I have been given a new 320 G peripheral hard-drive on which to place them

What I would like is a program that would organize them all.
I don't need imaging editing functionality.
I would like it to be easy enough for a med student to sit in front of and figure out how to use
I would like it to be able to hierarchically categorize the EKGs but also be able to search by keyword (Boolean logic would be nice too if possible). (eg: search for inferior MI AND heart-block)

I have used Photoshop extensively and I like their organizer for my photos (which I know is available alone as freeware as Adobe Photoshop Album) but it only does limited keyword searches.

Anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks,
-s

[gasman]

Ya- just tell the students EKGs are overrated. ;)
Tell'em to order an echo or MPI, something they can really use.

[Skrawny]

LOL

-why do they even make stethoscopes anymore?

-s

[gasman]

LOL

-why do they even make stethoscopes anymore?

-s


duh-

So we LOOK like doctors. :p

[Louis]

It sounds like these are images only? Stuff like JPG or GIfs?

I can't help on the purely image / database side of things, other than to mention that when we have tons of data that we want to store we tend to use Oracle databases. However, I doubt you want to mess with SQL. I'm sure there are some basic packages out there that can do this for you.

If the data is in time-history form then you can really get fancy, with all sorts of post-processing to look for certain rhythm patterns or whatever else you guys look for in the data. I'm sure there are proprietary tools used by the medical equipment manufacturers to do this.

I do know that MATLAB has lots of very powerful image processing and signal processing capabilities, but I doubt you want to get down and dirty programming that stuff yourself.

Good Luck
Louis

[sfghbiker]

I would check out wave maven at BID:

http://ecg.bidmc.harvard.edu/maven/mavenmain.asp

they have two hundred plus cases available to search by diagnosis, difficulty level or random challenge. If this is the kind of thing you are going for, I would get in touch with the creators and see what they have done. As a resident at UCSF I can tell you that I very much enjoy having important info and images as PDFs as they are a pretty universal format and I can pull them up or print them from wherever. I have a whole library of articles categorized by organ system and then disease that I carry around on a thumb drive and it allows me to quickly whip out evidenced based articles on the topic at hand.

edit: if you are at UCSF then maybe we should put our heads together about this EKG thing after a ride someday.

[woolly]

How "huge" is the stash? What format are they in?

I'd first consider a simple, straightforward, fairly low-tech approach. If the number of images are not all that great (thousands, but not tens of thousands), and the format is something standard like a jpeg, I'd just create an Excel spreadsheet to organize them. Have different columns for different attributes and use the Filtering function in Excel to narrow down the lists to what you're interested in at that moment. Or you can just do a "Find" on any word, number, or string. Have a column that contains a hyperlink to the image. You could just assign each scanned image a simple number for a name, and use the spreadsheet to locate/access each one - all the metadata stays in the spreadsheet, the image is just the scanned image.

Quick & easy to build, easy to use, all with "standard off-the-shelf parts".

[gregclimbs]

picasa?

works well for me...

g