Henry Feldman of Beth Israel Deaconess hospital in Boston shared with his experience using the iPad as his primary computing device for a week as an attending. We can only hope Apple will provide this function in future updates of the iPad OS. The apps available for organizing photos on the iPad, such as PhotoSort, appear to duplicate the images rather than manipulate the native photo album. One glaring omission on the iPad is a method to organize images into albums that would be preserved even when the iPad is synchronized with iPhoto. For the curious family member, these photos can really enliven the post-op waiting room conversation! I also use the Apple iPad camera adapter to quickly transfer intraoperative photos to my iPad. Export images as JPEGs into Dropbox folder on computer Insert patient’s CD ROM in computer and open with OsiriXģ. It is able to rapidly synchronize files across multiple devices through file-level trickery in which it determines only those portions of the files that are changed.

This terrific service has a web component and native applications for Macintosh, Windows, Linux, iPhone and iPad. Therefore, I will describe a simple method that uses Dropbox to export selected images to the iPad.ĭropbox is a multi-platform file-syncing utility. While the iPhone version of OsiriX will run on the iPad, I still find transferring DICOM files between the desktop and mobile applications unwieldy. In addition to basic features, such as measuring distance and angle, modifying window and level, zooming and panning, OsiriX has some features usually available only on expensive imaging workstations, such as 2D & 3D image reconstruction, and fusion of PET & CT studies. It is an indispensable part of my practice. I find it easily superior to just about every built-in reader bundled with patients’ CD-ROMs and routinely use it to view patients’ DICOM data. For those not yet acquainted, OsiriX is a free, open source DICOM (digital imaging and communication in medicine) viewer written for the Macintosh. The first, Osirix, may already be familiar to many readers of this journal.

But, how does one copy computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) images from a patient’s CD ROM to the iPad? I have found a very useful method involving two terrific and freely available resources OsiriX and Dropbox. As previously mentioned, one use of the iPad in the OR is to bring patient imaging studies to surgery.

Viewing an osirix dicom file in windows