Patent ID: 7885828
Filing Date: 2011-02-08
Classification: G16H

Abstract:
1. A data processing system for planning radiological requests, the system comprising: a memory configured to store patient data associated with a patient that is to undergo a current radiological procedure and a plurality of pre-determined protocol items related to acquiring images of one body area of the patient, each of the pre-determined protocol items being associated with the physical operation of a medical imaging device during a radiological procedure; a processor configured to retrieve updated patient data from a remote medical facility and update the patient data stored in the memory to reflect the updated patient data retrieved from the remote medical facility, the updated patient data being acquired during a previous examination of the patient performed at the remote medical facility and containing a new patient restriction identified during the previous examination; and the processor further configured to determine an optimized protocol by which to conduct the current radiological procedure by employing a rule-based algorithm acting upon the updated patient data, wherein the rule-based algorithm employed automatically determines the optimized protocol from among the plurality of pre-determined protocol items related to acquiring images of one body area of the patient as a function of (1) a body area of the patient to be examined during the current radiological procedure and (2) the new patient restriction contained within the updated patient data retrieved from the remote medical facility, and the processor facilitates the performance of the optimized protocol to acquire images of the body area of the patient to be examined such that the new patient restriction identified during the previous examination of the patient performed at the remote medical facility is automatically accounted for during the current radiological procedure.