Study matching policies are sets of term matching rules that may be applied to a given study to search for other related studies, for example, when searching for prior studies for a study sent to OnePacs. (The prior study retrieval feature requires an appropriately configured gateway with the ability to query/retrieve studies from a PACS archive.)
The source terms column contains a list of source term(s) to be matched in the study for which related studies will be needed. For example, to retrieve prior studies related to studies that involve the head, source terms might include 'head', 'facial', 'brain', and so on. The terms will be searched for in the study description and other relevant DICOM fields of the study.
In the "matching terms" column, a list of terms is entered to be used for identifying studies which may be related to the study in question. For example, if the study for which related studies is desired is determined to be of the ankle, matching terms for relevant other studies could include 'ankle', 'foot', and 'lower extremity'.
Example:
| Rule name | Source terms (search current study for these terms) | Matching terms (search for related studies containing these terms) | Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foot | Foot, feet | Foot, feet, ankle, lower extremity, tibia, fibula, calcaneus, knee | For studies of the foot, we could see relevant anatomy on a variety of other exams, possibly even the knee. So the matching list is broad in this case. |
| Head | Head, brain | Head, brain, facial, orbits, IAC, IACs, temporal | Same considerations apply for head CTs. Current studies of the head are likely labeled as either 'brain' or 'head' so this suffices for source terms. The matching terms are similarly broad to search for studies with potentially relevant anatomy. |
| Chest | chest | chest, cxr, thoracic, pulmonary, aortic, nodule, TB | Similar to above |