The all-in-one solution for routing, filtering, monitoring and conversion of DICOM Datasets.

Switchboard™ provides the ability to transparently monitor, log, filter, and convert DICOM datasets during DICOM network communications, serving as a multi-purpose DICOM bridge. Designed primarily for network or PACS administrators, developers, field service engineers, migration specialists, or anyone responsible for integrating DICOM devices, it facilitates interconnection of otherwise incompatible DICOM devices and rule based correction of dataset elements in real-time.

The user configures two DICOM network devices to communicate through Switchboard, which acts as an intermediate node: inspecting, forwarding, and optionally filtering and logging DICOM PDUs sent by each DICOM Application Entity. The user may configure, monitor, or control the application via any web browser that has network access to the device running Switchboard.

Normally provided for installation on Windows, Switchboard can also be supplied for a variety of popular platforms.

Switchboard Features:

• Configurable Filters — Provides for configurable filters that may alter selected DICOM message elements in real-time enabling Switchboard to detect and optionally modify or “fix” selected DIMSE messages.
• Mapping Rules — Device mapping rules route DICOM Messages and select filter sets to apply based on source host and/or AE Title.
• Tag Modification — DICOM elements may be added to, deleted from, or modified in the datasets as they pass through. Regular expression matching filters may be used to select and alter dataset elements in complex ways.
• Modification Tracking — Optionally stores a record of dataset modifications in the DICOM Original Attributes Sequence and/or the Contributing Equipment Sequence.
• Modification Look-up — Provides an option to look up modifications to apply from a text-based list.
• Alter Transfer Syntax — Provides the ability to alter the transfer syntax encoding when required to provide capabilities not supported by one host; for instance, Switchboard may be used to convert a dataset from Explicit Little Endian to JPEG-lossless compression.
• Portable and Robust — May run on the same or a different computer as the source or destination hosts. It is immune to packet dropping since it actively participates in the DICOM association.
• Remote Monitoring — Provides local or remote GUIs for web-based control and monitoring of Switchboard.
• PDU Repackaging — Provides the ability to re-package PDUs into different sizes if required.
• Association Logging — Provides monitoring/logging of DICOM associations. Log verbosity is dynamically configurable during an association to show various levels of DICOM information: association setup, ACSE PDUs, DIMSE reads/writes, PDU contents — summary or a full hexadecimal byte dump - and TCP/IP transactions.
• Selective Logging — only monitors the connection of interest, not all network traffic, eliminating much extraneous data.
• Dual mode operation — Transparent PDU forwarding vs. PDU Filtering Mode, both with logging capability.
• Real-time Status — A real-time status monitor and log console provide dynamic display of active associations and related network activity.

Benefits:

• Selectivity — Filter transactions of interest without worrying about other network traffic or other DICOM device communication.
• Flexibility — Performs optional, configurable filtering operations on actual messages, requires no secondary operations.
• Control — Dynamic control of the logging verbosity allows selective monitoring at an appropriate level of detail.
• Low Cost — No special equipment is required, the software installs and runs on your own hardware.
• Portability — Switchboard typically runs on Windows systems, but is also available for Linux systems.
• Ease of use — Convenient web-based GUI allows filtering to be defined and performed without coding custom software.
• Convenient — User may access the control interfaces from any system with web access to the Switchboard device.

Application Examples

Examples:

• Switchboard can function similar to an interface engine providing a common interface for a particular DICOM service; all modalities (clients, SCU) connect to a device (server, SCP) via Switchboard. If the server has to be replaced, serviced, or modified, no modifications to clients are required, only Switchboard's configuration needs to be modified. If a server is replaced, Switchboard's configuration is updated with the new server's identity and subsequent communications from clients are forwarded to the new server.

• Switchboard may be used to connect two DICOM devices that have some incompatibility in their implementation of the DICOM protocol, such that certain protocol fields need to have their values provided or altered. The DICOM DIMSE message filtering services in Switchboard can handle the detection and modification of the appropriate fields without requiring modifications to either the DICOM SCU or SCP (client or server) devices. Once the connection is functioning as desired, the service engineer can leave Switchboard in place or pursue permanent corrections to the offending device by consulting with the manufacturer.

• Referring to the same diagram, Switchboard may also be used to alter the encoding (transfer syntax) of messages as they pass from one system to another. For example, a modality (client, SCU) sends Switchboard implicit-little endian syntax and Switchboard passes messages to a remote archive (server, SCP) using one of the various JPEG compression transfer syntaxes.

• The Switchboard may be used as a supplementary tool to assist in the migration of DICOM data from one archive to another using our Exodus™ application or other such tool. Typically it is placed between the source and destination archives and provides the ability to apply user-defined filters to the DICOM data sets as they are being migrated. Data set elements may be altered in real-time. For example, tags may be added to the datasets: the Contributing Equipment Sequence could be set to record the original source archive for a data set, or tags may have their values dynamically modified, or unneeded tags could be removed. The Original Attributes Sequence may be automatically added or appended to preserve a record of any changes made.