text: To our colleagues, friends and loyal readers, greetings and salutations! Notwithstanding that the summer of 2013 will go down on record as one of the wettest in recent years, I hope that everyone found ample opportunity to enjoy some downtime with family and friends.\nAs we 'slip-and-slide' our way into the fall, we are undoubtedly chartering through some interesting times, as concerns about fraud remain one of the top-ten 'stay awake' issues for management and boards alike. Fraud surveys consistently find expense reimbursement fraud to be one of the most common methods to carry out fraud, as such schemes are generally easy to carry out and tend to stay below the radar. \nI have come across many organizations whose expense reimbursement policies and procedures are robust, from requiring itemized lists of expenses to original receipts, and everything in between. However, certain organizations fall short when their managers/supervisors blindly review the actual expense reports submitted by employees, without sufficient scrutiny of the underlying support provided or reconciliation to company policies; employees realize this and take advantage.\nOver the last few months, we have witnessed Canadian's Senators' expenses coming under the 'electron' microscope; even the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has taken a heightened interest in the Senators' expense practices.\nIt's critical that organizations have ironclad employee contracts and policies that protect both employer and employee rights, particularly when discipline and dismissal issues arise.\nThe perception that nobody is immune to fraud allegations seems to hold true, whether you are the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of a privately held business or high profile executive, such as the eccentric and outspoken real estate mogul, Donald Trump. The illustrious University bearing his name is alleged to have engaged in a phoney scheme that bilked students for up to $35,000 U.S. each; such allegations have yet to be proven in court.\nForensic accountants and the professionals with whom we work recognize that the rapid advancements in technology and consciousness of the environment require an adaptation to new investigation methods to ensure that we properly identify and secure all potential sources of evidence. \nInvestigators further recognize that technology has enabled fraudsters to seamlessly move funds between international jurisdictions. The effectiveness—or lack thereof—for forensic accountants, in conjunction with available legal remedies, to identify bank accounts and other assets, trace funds and freeze assets, is critical to the success of the investigation. This can represent the difference between a fraud victim being able to recover misappropriated funds or not.\nThe use of technology in conducting investigations has become commonplace, in order to effectively and efficiently process large volumes of data that exist in most organizations today; from data analytics to demonstrative evidence tools that are particularly useful in court, to computer forensics. \nRecognizing the changing face of forensic investigations and the evolving role of the forensic accountant from lead investigator to investigative consultant, Brad Sargent, my co-author of this blog, and I will be moderating an engaging panel of seasoned professionals at the upcoming AICPA Forensic and Valuation Services Conference, offered by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) in association with CPA Canada, to be held November 10-12, 2013 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, NV.\nIn addition to two forensic accountants from Canada and the U.S. (representing the Leafs and Blackhawks, respectively), the panel will comprise two U.S. attorneys, one Canadian employment lawyer and a computer forensic professional who citing recent cases will cover a variety of "hot topics" impacting the North American investigative and forensic accounting community. \nAs the title of this blog indicates, the theme of the panel is "The State of the Union of Forensic Accounting from both sides of the 49th Parallel." \nWe will be addressing current trends in the world of asset recovery, including answering the following critical questions:\n\n How are fraudsters using technology and false identities to conceal illicit activity and seamlessly moving proceeds of crime all over the globe? \n What are some of the current strategies being used by forensic accountants, together with lawyers/attorneys, to help clients trace and recover misappropriated assets? \n\nLike other experts who testify as witnesses in court, the role of the forensic accountant has evolved over recent years, as courts have taken specific and aggressive steps to weed out the 'hired guns'. AICPA Conference participants will hear from the perspective of a U.S. litigation attorney, including getting answers to the following questions:\n\n How has the voir dire process changed and what impact does this have on forensic accountants?\n What strategies are lawyers/attorneys using to discredit expert witnesses?\n How can forensic accountants prepare themselves for such increased scrutiny/examination?\n\nAs indicated earlier, the role of technology in today's investigations has changed dramatically. A seasoned computer forensics professional will share his insights based on experience from recent investigations, including addressing the following key questions:\n\n How are forensic accountants and computer forensic professionals dealing with the key challenges faced today insofar as the identification, collection and preservation of electronic evidence?\n I heard that file attributes and meta data were the same thing—is this true?\n\nOur panellists will also address the impact on forensic investigations vis-à-vis the discipline and dismissal process, from the perspective of a Canadian employment lawyer.\nWhile I hope to see you there, Brad and I also plan on sharing a few highlights and learnings from the conference in our upcoming posts.\nFor more information or to register go to:\nAICPA Forensic and Valuation Services Conference l November 10-12, 2013 l Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, NV\nBenefit from much more insight into the most current and relevant topics in forensic accounting today and take advantage of special pricing. \nThis was originally published by one of CPA Canada's legacy bodies.


text:
Designers become better by learn certain theories and nuances of logo design over time, and use these learnings as they produce designs. However, a human can only retain and regularly access so much knowledge. AI on the other hand has no limit of how much it can learn and frequently access.
There's also the question of experience. A designer purely focused on branding will design about 20 logos a year. An AI can design a million without skipping a beat. That's a million more learning experiences. A million more chances for the AI entity to learn what customers want.
Artificial intelligence has the capability to learn more than a traditional designer, and at a much faster pace – due to the sheer number of logos that the AI can work with.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Atalante has 88 seats in a permanent, gradually rising seating arrangement. The walls are painted black and the floor is springy wooden parquet. The stage has a black and white dance carpet and a black backdrop.
The measurements of the stage are width 12,5 meters, depth 10 meters, hight 5,10 meters (to the flybar for headlights)
For further information, please contact:
Viktor Wendin light
Pär Bengtsson sound
The stage has an entrance for loading, but no private parking for visiting groups.


text:
By Michelle Huneven.
384 pp. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf. $24.
ALICE BLACK is wakened in the small hours by crashing noises in her Los Angeles living room. There she finds two interlopers: a pregnant deer skittering over her bare floors, and her great-aunt Kate, who lives in a nursing home and couldn't possibly be in the house. Alice presumes the next morning that her vision was a dream, but traces of deer spoor, coupled with her family's history of mental illness, leave her deeply unsettled. Was the deer real or not?
Had Alice read the works of her great-great-grandfather, the philosopher and psychologist William James, she might have put the question differently. Reality, James wrote in his masterwork, ''The Principles of Psychology,'' ''means simply relation to our emotional and active life. . . . Whatever excites and stimulates our interest is real.'' Much of Michelle Huneven's second novel (her first was ''Round Rock'') meets these criteria; offbeat and vigorously written, it is engrossing in part because it wears its preoccupation with the paranormal so lightly.
''Jamesland'' is Alice's term for the life she has always tried to avoid: a world steeped in the influence of William James. ''Jamesland'' delivers up exactly such a world: the novel teems with people who have at least a passing knowledge of the philosopher's oeuvre, and often more than that (this is not the Los Angeles most of us know). Alice's resistance to Jamesland hasn't served her especially well; at 33 she's tending bar, living alone in her great-aunt's house and carrying on a histrionic affair with the alcoholic husband of a movie star. But her vision of the deer and the fear it engenders in her propel her beyond this narrow compass. She's soon befriended by Helen Harland, the passionate minister of a nearby Unitarian Universalist church, whose favorite writer is none other than William James. Helen helps Alice get a job transcribing tapes for a scholar whose research topic is psychics who claim to have contact with the philosopher. (Among other fun facts, we learn that James appears to psychics almost as frequently as Elvis does.)
Meanwhile, Alice's great-aunt Kate has spent much of her life at work on a biographical novel about James, and Alice begins filching and reading pages, most of which dramatize James's relationship with his sister, Alice's namesake, known for her posthumously published diaries. James's omnipresence can occasionally feel didactic, as when one of Alice's regulars at the bar, a therapist, remarks that James was ''America's first clinical psychologist . . . and he's considered the father of cognitive psychology.'' But Huneven rarely indulges in such telegraphing, and for the most part James's wacky ubiquity is one of the novel's charms. He becomes an element of the atmosphere; once we've adjusted, we hardly notice he's there.
The novel's other main character is Pete Ross, a once celebrated chef now in recovery from a breakdown and suicide attempt, whom Helen counsels in meditation. Acrimoniously divorced and legally barred from seeing his son, Pete works at a food pantry and lives with his mother, who has become a nun in her widowhood and taken a leave from her convent to nurse him. Pete is the novel's wicked scene-stealer, a complex and mesmerizing character and the occasion for some of Huneven's sharpest prose. Of Pete's arrangement with his mother, she writes: ''In return for . . . breaking up her marriage to the Resurrection Kid, he cooked the hell out of dinner every night. She stayed trim as a broom. He'd swelled.''
Smitten with Helen, who has a boyfriend, cowering at the prospect of returning to life, Pete is a caldron of rage and intelligence and savage humor, much of it directed at himself. ''Nobody bothered him in the Local History Corner'' of the public library, Huneven writes. ''People peered in, saw a jumbo ragamuffin gnawing on pencils in a shamble of books and decided to browse elsewhere.'' Huneven is a restaurant critic for L.A. Weekly; in her hands, Pete's love of food and encyclopedic knowledge of it are made utterly credible (I actually tried one of his tricks for roasting chicken and found it delicious), and his lurching efforts at socialization prompt hilarious swings between wit and rudeness. But Huneven never lets us forget Pete's pain. Describing the aftermath of his suicide attempt, she writes: ''The young E.R. intern, a generic surfer boy, had lifted and turned Pete's slashed arms much the way Helen just had. Severed tendons had sprouted from the wrist like thin, limp stalks of rhubarb. 'Watch this,' the intern told a nurse, then touched a gloved finger to one dangling length. The tendon snapped back like a sensitive form of tide-pool life. 'Let me,' said the nurse. Taking turns, they made his tendons snap and coil, exclaiming as if he could not see or hear them, or feel the tugging at his wrists.''Continue reading the main story
It would be hard for anyone to stand up to Pete on the page, and Alice makes for a comparatively wan literary companion. Friendless and miserable after her breakup with the movie star's husband, she comes off mostly as a drag (Pete refers to her as a ''black hole''), which makes her appeal to others -- Helen, for example, who actively seeks out a friendship with Alice -- somewhat baffling. And her fears of mental illness seem asserted rather than felt.
But Alice grows on the reader with time, particularly when she becomes instrumental to the novel's overarching delight: the pleasure, perfected by Jane Austen, of watching two seemingly incompatible people gravitate inexorably toward each other. Near the end of ''Jamesland,'' Alice has a moment of spiritual connection that would have intrigued her great-great-grandfather; standing on the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River, watching dogs frolic in its filthy water, she's suddenly and inexplicably filled with joy. ''For the first time in Alice's life, some kind of prayer, some admission to the universe, seemed in order.'' It's a lovely crescendo, the point in ''Jamesland'' where the preoccupations of William James fuse most urgently and effortlessly with the life of its protagonist.
The last part of ''Jamesland'' is beset by a jarring change of pace, as if Huneven were in a great hurry, or exhausted by the prospect of having to tie up so many loose ends. Her descriptive brio flags, and the writing turns sketchy. When Alice's ex, the movie star's husband, reappears unexpectedly at her home, the meeting is so spectral that I mistook it at first for another one of Alice's visions. The same is true of Pete's encounters with his ex-wife and son. Had Huneven left some of these concluding scenes to the reader's imagination, the novel's final movement would have been stronger. Yet despite its flaws, ''Jamesland'' is a winning place to while away some time. And as James put it in ''Principles,'' ''The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.''Continue reading the main story


text:
Israel Anguishes Over Captured Soldier
Tuesday, June 27, 2006; 4:54 PM
MITSPEH HILA, Israel -- Giving voice to his nation's anguish, the father of a kidnapped Israeli soldier begged Tuesday for a sign his son is alive.
Speaking on TV from his Galilee home, Noam Shalit asked "to hear his voice and to see his face."
Two days after his capture by Palestinian militants, the fate of Cpl. Gilad Shalit riveted the hearts and minds of Israelis. His face was plastered on newspapers, callers to talk shows prayed for his safety, and Israel threatened to invade Gaza.
A poster-style graphic on two pages of the Yediot Ahronot daily carried the plea "Bring Gilad back," and his abduction was the top item on news broadcasts,
All the soldier's father, Noam Shalit, had to do to speak to the nation _ and the world _ was walk out his front door. TV crews have been camped in his front yard since his son was identified as the missing soldier Sunday.
Shalit, a slim, graying 53-year-old with cobalt blue eyes who runs a bed-and-breakfast overlooking the hills of Lebanon, used foreign TV channels to appeal in English to Gilad's captors to treat him well and set him free.
Talking to The Associated Press on his front porch, Shalit said, "We'd like to get a life sign from Gilad, to hear his voice, and to see his face, and to see he is well."
The father said he was working in his home office when Israeli army officers came to his door. "They said Gilad is missing in action. And then we went to my wife's office, with the officers, and I told her this awful ...," he said, choking, unable to continue.
Now, two days after the raid on the army post, "the main issue, the main fear, the main thing, is uncertainty," he said. Asked how they cope, he replied ruefully, "We don't cope."
Israelis are feeling his pain personally. In an emotional commentary in the Maariv daily, political analyst Ben Caspit wrote: "The life of an Israeli soldier, with a picture, a smile, a hairdo, noble family, is hanging in the balance. A hairbreadth can separate between his life and a region-wide flare-up and a massive Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip."
Lost in the attention over the captive was the fact that two members of his tank crew were killed in the Palestinian attack on the Gaza border crossing. They were buried quietly within a day of the clash.
Israel's concern for captive soldiers has been called its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Soldiers know they won't be left behind in the field, but on the other hand, the emotional outpouring can prompt the government to bend its principle of refusing to negotiate with kidnappers.


text:
Help with private online store
Hello and thanks for your help! Im trying to create a private online store and im having a little trouble. im looking to have a user login and non user contact form before you can enter the store. i would also like that once the user is signed in that they can view the store and have a shopping cart with product pages without signing in agian. at checkout i need a conformation email sent to myself and the user. there is no need for payment as i will be dilivering in person. is this somthing that can be done? thank you so much for your time and help!!
Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
- The topic 'Help with private online store' is closed to new replies.


text:
I'm technically help desk right now, but I'm learning some more of the server administration side of things and would like some good material to supplement my tinkering. Does anyone know of any good informative books or ebooks? Hopefully it won't be too over my head since I don't have any formal IT training
7 Replies
Jul 22, 2011 at 1:37 UTC
Dumb old me...a quick stop at Amazon.com and searching on "windows 2008 r2" might be a fine starting point.
Jul 22, 2011 at 1:51 UTC
Here's a thread that posted earlier this week that points to some free ebooks and such from Microsoft. There's one on there about R2.
Jul 22, 2011 at 2:11 UTC
Sans unleashed series are usually good and also the MS press administration series.
Jul 22, 2011 at 3:16 UTC
William Stanek's Server 2008 Pocket Consultant. Stanek's books are the best. They are all from MS Press
Jul 22, 2011 at 3:34 UTC
I have both the Sams - Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed by Morimoto, Noel, Droubi, Mistry, and Amaris... and Windows Server 2008 R2 Administration Instant Reference by Matthew Hester and Chris Henley bought from iBooks on my iPad. Great references. I prefer the Sams on though.
Jul 25, 2011 at 7:33 UTC
MS Press admin books. I've used them for my studies (self study, ground up) & I've found them to be really nice. Except the SQL 2008 book... Didn't understand any of it! :D
Jul 25, 2011 at 7:46 UTC
MS Press just released the 2nd editions of their 70-640 (Active Directory), 70-642 (Configuring Server 2008 R2/DNS/DHCP/etc), and 70-646. These all now cover Server 2008 R2.
Just go on Amazon and put in those test #'s.
This discussion has been inactive for over a year.
You may get a better answer to your question by starting a new discussion.


text:
What is JotForm?
JotForm is a free online form builder which helps you create online forms without writing a single line of code. No sign-up required.
At JotForm, we want to make sure that you're getting the online form builder help that you need. Our friendly customer support team is available 24/7.
We believe that if one user has a question, there could be more users who may have the same question. This is why many of our support forum threads are public and available to be searched and viewed. If you'd like help immediately, feel free to search for a similar question, or submit your question or concern.
JotForm Support
If you are referring to the code that will be used to embed your form, you can get it through Publish.
Here's how:
Here's a guide that you can use as reference:


text:
"I don't get headaches - I GIVE headaches."
- Darth Patron
I suspect my father may be a Satanist because of his liberal use of the "Hook 'em Horns" hand sign.
People only believe the Wikipedia version of events, so read the following articles:
"Hook 'em Horns" = "Sign of the Horns"
Note: I don't think it is actually very likely that he is a practicing Satanist - I consider it more likely that he is just an unwitting UT fan/lover of the State of Texas. That being said, there are subtle signs that point towards possible involvement in secret societies, and I cannot trust this person any longer.
On the morning of Saturday, February 2nd, I called my father on the telephone with the distinct purpose of asking him if he was a Satanist. He said hello and told me he was enjoying walking the dog on a Sunday morning. I knew it was a Saturday morning, so I thought this was exceptionally peculiar. My roommate later suggested to me that he had answered thusly, and had said it was a Sunday, because he was actually in Australia (the time difference). This reminded me of Rupert Murdoch, since I had previously said that R.M. was probably in Australia drinking babies' blood when he stumbled on Gotye and decided to make a new star.
[see post "OncoMemes"]
Instead of answering directly, he scoffed that he could be an alien and said that he was "a snake in that chair". I stood up from my own chair and asked which chair he was talking about and what he meant by that. He said that he was looking at a chair where he was but did not explain what he meant when he said that he was an alien and a snake in the chair.
All this snake and alien talk reminds me very much of my evil twin Kenan G. Heppe's story of being a reptilian shapeshifter being from another planet. (It also fits with David Icke's model of the universe)
[see post "KGH, my evil twin"]
I think the ET reptilian shapeshifter story is very likely a device that people on the inside of secret societies like the Freemasons, Rosicrucians, Illuminati, Alchemists, etc. use to manipulate and confuse/deceive their victims/muggles.
But I think the reptilian shapeshifter story may in some senses be an analog for the truth. A "reptile being from another planet" is similar to "the Kundalini 'serpent'" from another chakra (each chakra is like a planet unto itself that receives Light from the Sun (Sol)).
Later in our conversation, my father also declared that ALL of my conspiracy theories were one big delusion.
Since I know that at least some of my conspiracy theorizing is based on fact, I have lost ALL trust for this person.
Others make liberal use of this hand sign also, including the Windsor-Bush family. But it's actually a Satanic gesture, not just "[Happy] Go [Lucky] Longhorns!" No joke!
Pretty sneaky...
("Hook 'Em" approximately equals "Fuck 'Em")
"Fuck the muggles," that is. (George Bush's motto?)
It's too bad we don't have a picture of him with the Satanic gesture in one hand and the middle finger in the other...
Other Berlusconi gestures...
[these pictures of Berlusconi doing strange hand symbols come from this article: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/07/silvio-berlusconi-201107]
Yet another version of the Satanic gesture:
Walter Cronkite, the "most trusted man in America" was the voice for Moloch the Babylonian owl god at Bohemian Grove.
"most trusted man in America"
To learn more about the strange mystery-religion rituals of the elites, and for more information about Bohemian Grove,
[see post ""Weaving spiders come not here!""].


text:
Not Your Grandmother's Bread Pudding
READY IN: 1hr 30mins
Recipe by Brenda G
I recently pruchased a dozen very large Hot Cross Buns on my way home from visiting my new grandson in Alberta, only to discover they were really stale (packaged in one of those "clam shells" as bakery departments are known to do). Unwilling to throw them out, I thought I should try making Bread pudding out of them. I'm going make it every Easter!
Ingredients Nutrition
- 1 dozen large hot cross bun (less one piece broken off when I discovered the freshness!)
- 118.29 ml butter, melted
- 236.59 ml brown sugar
- 236.59 ml raisins
- 1 package Skor English toffee bit, baking pieces
- 236.59 ml blanched slivered almond
- 946.36 ml milk, scaled and cooled
- 354.88 ml southern butter pecan liquid coffee creamer
- 6 eggs
- 4.92 ml cinnamon
- 4.92 ml salt
- 9.85 ml vanilla
Directions See How It's Made
- Cut buns into half inch cubes.
- drizzle melted butter over cubes and toss gently to coat.
- add brown sugar, raisins, cinnamon, Skor pieces and almonds, mixing gently to combine.
- place in a lightly greased 4 quart casserole dish, set aside.
- Combine eggs, salt, and vanilla, beating until fluffy with a wisk.
- add liquid coffee whitener to cooled milk and wisk into egg mixture.
- Pour over bun cube mixture and gently press cubes into liquid.
- Place casserole dish in a large pan ( I used my roaster) and fill with hot water one third up the side of the casserole dish.
- Bake @ 350 degrees for about 1 1/4 hours, or until knife inserted in the centre comes out clean.


text:
A KickAss Bitcoin Job Board!
To post a job, login or create an account
Russia, a bizarre country full of unique cool things and foods. If you ever wanted a Russian souvenir, here is your chance.
Just send me a request with a description of an item or a picture, and it will be on its way to you. Any courier you prefer.


text:
|Publication number
|Publication type
|Application number
|Publication date
|Dec 14, 2010
|Filing date
|Nov 23, 2005
|Priority date
|Nov 23, 2005
|Fee status
|Also published as
|Publication number
|Dongbai Guo
|Original Assignee
|Oracle International Corp.
|Export Citation
|BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan
|Patent Citations (15), Non-Patent Citations (1), Referenced by (23), Classifications (8), Legal Events (3)
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the storage of medical data and in particular to providing medical imaging capabilities through a database management system.
2. Brief Description of Related Developments
Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine ("DICOM") is the dominant standard for radiology imaging and communication. DICOM standardizes the data format and transfer protocol for data such as for example, images, waveforms, workflow messages and diagnostic reports. It is used in many fields of medicine, such as for example, radiology, cardiology and dentistry. The DICOM standard encompasses a large number of medical imaging modalities, such as for example computed tomography, magnetic resonance, ultrasound, positron emission tomography and digital radiography.
A DICOM object can store medical images, waveforms and diagnostic reports. A key concept of DICOM is to store metadata (attributes) along with image or waveform content. The metadata augments the image or waveform content with ownership, organization, imaging condition, layout, and workflow information. There is frequently a need to search DICOM images by this metadata or share the metadata with a popular web formatting specification such as extensible Markup Language ("XML"). In addition, there is also a need to share the image content with applications outside of a DICOM image repository (e.g. PACS).
DICOM was initiated by the American College of Radiology (ACR) to enhance the connectivity of radiological devices. Before DICOM became a widely adopted standard, each manufacturer had its own proprietary image format and communication protocol. It was almost impossible to produce third-party software to manage and/or study medical data. It was also impossible to connect devices from different manufacturers. In 1985, ACR and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) jointly published a medical imaging and communications standard, which was named the ACR-NEMA standard, to address this problem. Later in 1993, the standard went through major revisions and was renamed to DICOM (version 3.0). Since then, DICOM has dominated the field of radiology imaging and all major manufacturers conform to this standard. Today, any software component can take DICOM data from any manufacturer and manage the data with a uniform interface.
Like other standards, the DICOM standard is mostly developed by volunteers. Working groups formed by domain experts propose additions and changes to the existing standards and the changes are approved by a balloting process. Typically, NEMA publishes a new version of the standard each year on its web site [DICOMWEB] and the document is freely available for worldwide download.
The DICOM standard has two major areas of focuses: the data format and the communication/message protocol to exchange DICOM objects. The first part, the data format, is defined using object-oriented programming principles. Images and waveforms captured by an imaging device are represented as objects (information objects in DICOM terminology). Services (operations) such as "get" "find" and "store" may be defined on these objects. The services and the information objects are combined into service object pairs (SOPs). To send an object across the network or to encode the content of a DICOM object into a file, DICOM defines different types of transfer syntax (binary encoding rules). Transfer syntax specifies the mapping of a DICOM object hierarchy into a binary stream. The binary content can be stored on physical media such as tapes, CDs or floppy disks, and organized using the DICOM directory hierarchy. It can also be exchanged over a network with the DICOM communication protocol. The DICOM communication protocol covers the upper layers (application, presentation and session layer) of the OSI seven layer model (The DICOM communication protocol is typically implemented on top of TCP/IP). Recently, the DICOM standard introduces web access to DICOM objects (WADO), which covers HTTP access to a DICOM object storage. interMedia DICOM features primarily deal with the data format aspect of the DICOM standard.
Traditionally, medical information and data, such as for example DICOM objects, are stored in a (network) file system provided by an operating system. With the recent explosive growth in both the number and size of medical images, there has been an increasing need to manage DICOM objects with a database. When compared to the flat file system, a database offers better security, scalability and manageability. Database features such as backup, disaster recovery, and logical standby are also critical to medical applications. Objects managed in a database can be indexed to improve the efficiency of retrieval with Structured Query Language (SQL). Most modern databases are integrated with mid-tier applications such as a web server or an application server to facilitate the cross enterprise sharing of the data content.
However, a traditional database management system does not recognize medical data and information such as for example, DICOM objects natively. One cannot index DICOM objects or search them by their attributes. XML is widely used in metadata management applications. XML helps to reduce software development costs because of the wide range of tools available to create, edit, display, search and transform an XML document. XML is also easier to document and implement as well as integrate with other applications, such as for example HL7 V3 messaging and bioinformatics applications.
Previous attempts to map XML to DICOM have involved message exchange. The prior solutions provide a strong type of XML schema definition to rigorously constrain a DICOM information object. The result is a large number of complex XML schemas. It is very convenient to exchange an XML representation of a DICOM object and an XML document conforming to the XML schema definition will map to a conformant DICOM object. Due to the complexity of this type of XML mapping, it is inefficient to store/query/index their representation of metadata in a database management system.
It would therefore be advantageous to be able to define an XML representation of the metadata contained in medical data and images, such as DICOM objects, to facilitate the integration of medical data and images with database management systems ("DBMS").
To help reviewers better understand the rest of this document, some DICOM terminology is described below. Normative definitions can be found from [DICOM2004].
Standard attributes are the set of attributes defined by the DICOM standard committee, and are published in DICOM standard part 6. A standard attribute can be modified or deprecated by the standard committee at a later date. The number of standard attributes grows each year as the DICOM standard expands to new areas.
Private attributes are attributes defined by an organization and encoded in a DICOM object according to private attribute encoding rules. A private attribute can add modality-specific, manufacturer-specific or site-specific information to a DICOM object. Private attributes are not administered by the DICOM standard and are generally not known or used by any organization other than the one defining them.
Value representation is the DICOM standard's term for data type. The DICOM standard defines the following standard data types in part 5 of the standard: AE, AS, AT, CS, DA, DS, DT, FL, FD, IS, LO, LT, OB, OF, OW, PN, SH, SL, SQ, SS, ST, TM, UL, UN, US and UT.
Value multiplicity specifies how many times the value an attribute may repeat. It is part of the standard attribute specification (Part 6 of the DICOM standard).
An information object is an object-oriented representation of a real world entity in DICOM.
A service object pair (SOP) class models a category of information object and a set of operation associated with this information object.
A DICOM object is a binary stream or a standalone file that encodes a DICOM SOP class instance according to the DICOM standard. A DICOM object can store different types of data, such as patient administration information, a waveform, an image, a slice of a 3D volume, a video segment, a diagnostic report, a graphic or text annotation. A DICOM object contains a number of standard attributes. It may optionally contain private attributes.
Transfer syntax designates a particular way of encoding a DICOM object into a binary stream. It also specifies how the data content should be compressed. Examples of DICOM compression codec include JPEG, JPEG-LS, JPEG2000 and MPEG2.
A DICOM image refers any DICOM object that can be decomposed into 2D pixel arrays. Examples include a video segment, volume scan, and a single frame dental image. A DICOM image is always a DICOM object, but the converse is not true.
A unique identifier (UID) is a 64 byte dot-concatenated numeric string (like an IP address). It is a DICOM data type that is based on ISO object identifier (OID). It uniquely identifies a DICOM object worldwide. It is commonly constructed with a root that uniquely identifies an organization producing DICOM objects and a suffix that uniquely identifies a DICOM object within the organization.
Some other definitions include:
A SQL object is the database object that encapsulates a DICOM object. The SQL object has public member methods that permit the query and processing of a DICOM object.
Metadata extraction is the process of extracting attributes from a DICOM object.
A parser extracts metadata from a DICOM object into an in-memory structure.
Metadata encoding is the process of encoding the extracted DICOM attributes into an DICOM metadata document.
A (XML) metadata encoder converts the in-memory structure of the extracted DICOM attributes into an XML document.
Schema validation is the process of using an XML schema definition to validate an XML document that is constrained by the schema. With schema validation, one may confirm the correctness of the data type, data format, and hierarchy. Schema validation is generally only applicable to XML documents and not to DICOM objects.
Standard conformance is the syntactical and semantic consistency of a DICOM object with respect to the DICOM standard. The default constraint definition documents can generally define constraints that enforce the DICOM standard conformance.
Application conformance is the semantic consistency of a DICOM object with respect to application specific conformance rules, which may be stronger or weaker than the DICOM standard. An administrator may modify the default constraint document to enforce a different set of conformance rules to better suit the application.
Conformance validation is the process of checking the semantic conformance of a DICOM object to the DICOM standard against constraint definition documents.
A (DICOM) metadata document is an XML document that encodes the attributes extracted from a DICOM object. Each DICOM object maps to one metadata document. We provide methods to build a metadata document from a DICOM object. A DICOM metadata document has two sections. One section is the named section, where elements are organized by a predefined hierarchy and each element is addressable by a fixed XPath. We refer to attributes in this section as named attributes. The other section is the unnamed section, where the rest of the extracted attributes are organized and listed by their value representation. Each attribute in this section can be addressed with an XPath query of the element tag (in the form of /DATA_TYPE(tag=='HHHHHHHH')). We refer to attributes in this section as unnamed attributes.
DICOM data type definition schema is an XML schema that defines the value representations (i.e. DICOM data types) given in the DICOM standard part 5. This data type definition schema is strongly coupled with DICOM parser. Any modification to this schema mandates data migration.
A metadata schema is the XML schema document that constrains the DICOM metadata document. This schema references the DICOM data type definition schema.
Standard data dictionary document is an XML document that lists the attributes defined by the DICOM standard. The DICOM standard data dictionary document is converted from the DICOM standard part 6. An administrator may update this document to reflect the most recent releases made by the DICOM standard committee.
Private data dictionary document lists private attributes. There are may be one or more private data dictionary documents. Each contains a set of private attribute definitions and its owning organization's UID. A private data dictionary document can be published by a third party. A database administrator may add new private data dictionary documents as they become available.
A (XML) mapping document is an XML document to define how each DICOM attribute should map to an element of the DICOM metadata document. The mapping document is used by the metadata encoder to produce a DICOM metadata document. Since the metadata document is constrained by the metadata schema, the mapping document must match the metadata schema and they can be derived from each other. We define a default mapping document that couples with the DICOM metadata schema. A database administrator may customize the mapping document and the metadata schema for each database instance.
Constraint definition documents are a set of XML documents that define groups of predicates to validate the conformance of a DICOM object or a DICOM metadata document. A constraint document should be based on the SOP class specification given in part 3 of the DICOM standard. It should specify attribute relationships and semantic constraint of an attribute that is not expressed by the DICOM metadata schema. An administrator may customize a constraint document to make it stronger, weaker or different from what have been defined by the DICOM standard.
Preference document specifies a set of the runtime preferences. We ship a default preference document. An administrator may update this document to change the run time behavior, such as changing the logging destination, turning on/off the logging of warning messages, and ignoring certain category of errors.
A configuration document is unique for each database instance and applicable to all DICOM objects stored in the database. Configuration documents are managed by the repository. Examples of configuration documents are data dictionary documents, the XML mapping document, constraint definition documents and a preference document.
A repository stores documents that are applicable to all SQL objects stored in a database instance. An administrator can access the repository and update the document stored in this repository. The changes made will affect the outcome of a method. Mapping document, data dictionary document and constraint document are examples of document stored in the repository. At runtime, a method will query the repository to get the latest copy of the document. For example, a database administrator updates an attribute definition in a data dictionary document and change its data type from DA (date) to DT (datatime). From there on, the parser will interpret this attribute as an instance of the DT (datatime) data type and the metadata encoder will encode this attribute as DT (datatime) in all future metadata documents.
DICOM volume scan is the set of images gathered in the single imaging operation. They can be stored as separate slices in multiple DICOM objects. Or they may be stored as a single DICOM multiframe object.
The disclosed embodiments are directed to a method of integrating syntactically valid medical images into a database management system. In one embodiment, a database table is created and a database object is initialized with a medical image object. The medical image object is parsed. An XML representation of metadata associated with the medical image object is created and the database object is inserted in the table.
In one aspect, the disclosed embodiments are directed to a of creating an XML schema definition for medical data media. In one embodiment the method includes defining shared attributes; defining application specific attributes; and mapping medical data media data types into XML schema data types.
In another aspect, the present invention is directed to a method for managing a DICOM object in a database. In one embodiment, the method includes defining a XML schema comprising a fixed core segment and an extensible segment, including attributes for all DICOM objects in the fixed core segment; and including a sequence of data element descriptors in the extensible segment.
The foregoing aspects and other features of the present invention are explained in the following description, taken in connection with the accompanying drawings, wherein:
Referring to
The disclosed embodiments generally define a unified XML representation of a medical information data object to integrate a medical data storage application to a database management system. For example, in one embodiment, when storing DICOM objects, it is cumbersome to define a separate XML schema for each object type because the DICOM standard does not define an XML mapping. Large numbers of schemas can complicate data management, and large documents with hundreds of attributes greatly impairs the usefulness and selectivity of the metadata. The unified XML schema definition of the disclosed embodiments can be used to represent any medical information or data object in a database. The features of the disclosed embodiments can also be used to represent DICOM objects in order to integrate a DICOM application to or with a database management system. Although the embodiments of the present invention will generally be described herein with reference to DICOM applications, the scope of the disclosed embodiments are not so limited and can be applied to any medical data, communication and information storage application or system.
The disclosed embodiments present an XML schema definition of the metadata for managing DICOM objects in a database. Although the disclosed embodiments are described in terms of XML, the scope of the present invention is not so limited, and XML is only one example of such a construct. The embodiments of the present invention can be used in conjunction with any image or data that is stored, in any particular format, that is mappable to XML.
The metadata is the set of attributes extracted or derived from an object that are needed to describe, organize and retrieve the object within or from the database. In one embodiment, the XML schema definition for representing any DICOM object in a database comprises a fixed core segment and an extensible segment. The fixed core segment can be composed of attributes that are either derivable or defined for all DICOM objects. These can include for example, patient, series and study. The extensible segment can be composed of a sequence of data element descriptors and supports unique requirements for specific DICOM implementations. These can include for example, version, modality and manufacturer or application specific attributes. By using this metadata definition, the DBMS functions can efficiently index, retrieve, manage and publish DICOM objects. XML is used as an intermediate representation of the DICOM metadata to facilitate the indexing and query of DICOM objects. Although reference is made herein to the use of XML and SQL objects that contain a member attribute that is an XML document, in alternate embodiments, the equivalent information can be stored in any suitable encoding format, such as for example, nested tables.
XML is used as an intermediate representation of the DICOM metadata to facilitate the indexing and query of DICOM objects within a database application. The disclosed embodiments map composite media storage service object pairs ("SOP"), which is the subset that are typically stored in an image archive and subsequently retrieved. The XML representation is transient and does not have to be persistently stored in a database management system. The XML representation must be stable and address database integration problems, such as for example, facilitating the indexing, querying and retrieval of medical image and data objects. XML permits the use of private attributes and allows easy customization and transformation.
Data types and encoding of the extracted metadata are converted into XML. The data type schema is tightly coupled with the underlying implementation. It is fixed and is released together with the application. The XML schema for the metadata document is user-configurable, which means the DICOM attributes, standard or private, can be mapped to any tree structure with user-configurable element names.
The separation of conformance validation and metadata encoding allows the use of a single XML schema to represent any DICOM objects. The XML document is simply a snapshot of what has been encoded into a DICOM object. All DICOM media storage object pair (SOP) objects share the same schema definition.
The single simplified schema representation reduces the number of distinct elements and the complexity of the XML schema, and thus increases the efficiency of the DICOM metadata management. The reason for this efficiency is that the complexity of the shredded storage of an XML schema based document increases with the complexity of the defining XML schema. DICOM objects from difference modalities can be managed in the same database table column. An application can quickly retrieve a DICOM object by its metadata. Although many DICOM objects are images, some are not, such as for example waveforms and radiology reports. The scope of the present invention applies to images, as well as waveforms and reports, for example.
Referring to
The second group is called unnamed or application specific attributes that are modality/SOP class specific and private attributes. Application specific attributes are generally flat list data items, extensible content, are strongly typed, attribute fully qualified and the sequence (SQ) structure is preserved. The application specific attributes are generally addressable by group and element tags (four-byte hexadecimal numbers). This classification is a relative concept, and in alternate embodiments an administrator can customize the classifications.
An attribute definer can be used to define 203 the attributes of the medical image. The shared attributes are mapped 204 and the application specific attributes are mapped 205. Once the XML mapping for both sets of attributes are defined, the XML metadata schema representing the medical image, or in one embodiment the DICOM objects, can be defined 206.
In one embodiment, shared attributes metadata information can include a file meta header, and SOP unique identifier and attributes that are common to all DICOM storage SOP classes. Examples can include, patient, study, series data, image, waveform, curve metadata, structured reports or small, standardized sets of data. Shared attribute data can generally often be present, is modality independent, stable and frequently queried.
Those DICOM attributes that are designated application specific attributes are generally modality specific, SOP class specific and private. The application specific attributes is a large and ever increasing set, very often absent, is application specific, volatile and not searched frequently. Examples can include attributes from X-Ray image modules, X-Ray acquisition modules or MR-diffusion modules.
For example, one instance of the database application 11 in
The purpose of this classification is to allow an application designer to customize the XML metadata schema to enhance the readability and the performance of his application. The metadata schema can be designed such that the named attributes are the smallest set that the application needs. Therefore the schema will be much simpler and more efficient to store and access than a generic schema defining all DICOM standard attributes. This design also allows a private attribute to be defined as a named attribute in the metadata schema and therefore simplifies the use of a private attribute. This permits efficient query of a private attribute in a database environment where many private attributes defined by different organizations coexist.
The data type schema are generally defined so that only DICOM-compatible data types are permitted in a DICOM metadata document. With this design definition, every attribute in a DICOM object can be mapped into an XML element, and every valid XML document can be mapped into a parsable DICOM object. This also allows an attribute to be converted between the named and unnamed type by direct cut-and-paste.
The disclosed embodiments generally provide for the lossless mapping between a DICOM object and a metadata document. A syntactically valid DICOM object can be mapped into a schema validated metadata document. The DICOM metadata document, combined with image or waveform data that can be optionally omitted, can be converted back into a syntactically valid DICOM object. The resultant DICOM object, after going through XML transformation, is semantically identical to the original. If the original DICOM object conforms to the DICOM standard, the result can be bitwise identical
With standard-conformant data type: 1) Any valid metadata document can be translated into a syntactically valid DICOM object; an 2) Any syntactically valid DICOM object can be mapped into a valid XML document. The metadata schema can be customized by an application designer and is only dependent on the DICOM value representation definition. Unlike other parts of the DICOM standard, DICOM value representation is much more stable. As a result, the default or a customized XML metadata schema will remain valid even if the standard committee releases a new SOP class or modifies the existing ones. In other words, the XML metadata schema definition of the disclosed embodiments is a universal XML schema for all DICOM SOP class instances, because the XML metadata schema is not coupled with a particular DICOM standard release or a particular SOP class.
At initialization time, the database table 12 is created. A database object 15 is then initialized with a DICOM object. The database object 15 contains functions to parse a DICOM object and create an XML representation of the DICOM metadata. The database object 15 can be inserted into the table 12 and an index can be built on the image column 14. At runtime, a query can be issued on the database object 15. The query, such as searching for an image 16 by its DICOM unique identifier (SOP instance UID), can be translated into a query on its XML metadata 17. The same XML can be used to build a relational database. All DICOM objects share the same XML schema and all XML data can share the same database table column.
The metadata schema for the DICOM XML metadata is created and this schema is associated with the XML namespace designated to the default XML metadata schema. At runtime, when a DICOM object 16 is uploaded into the database 11, the DICOM object 16 will be stored within the database object 15, described herein as SQLDICOM. The XML metadata extraction function can be invoked at the same time the database object 15, SQLDICOM object is created or optionally at a later time. The database object 15 can be inserted into the table 12 with the proper ID 13 and an index can be built on its metadata content. At run time, a query can be issued on the table 12 to search for a particular DICOM object. The query on the SQLDICOM object 15 can be translated into a query on the XML metadata 17 of the DICOM object 16 stored in the SQLDICOM 15. The XML metadata query is easy to implement since most database management systems have integrated XML support.
The implementation framework and use case scenario described by
In the framework of the disclosed embodiments, all DICOM objects share the same XML schema. Therefore, they can be stored in the same database table column.
Referring to
An SQLDICOM object 31 has many member functions, such as extracting metadata from the embedded DICOM object 33, compressing the embedded DICOM object 33, converting the embedded DICOM object 33 into a different type of transfer syntax, and converting the imbedded DICOM object 33 into an anonymized DICOM object. The member functions may benefit from data structures and information stored within the private member variables 35. With member functions, one may directly obtain a processed copy of the embedded DICOM object 33 from an SQLDICOM object 31. A sample application is to select a DICOM image from the database and to publish the DICOM image on the Web. The application may request a JPEG representation of the DICOM image at the publishing time, and the resulting JPEG image can be directly embedded into a web browser for easy sharing. The mid-tier application is simple and secure. The JPEG image can be generated on the fly or ahead of the time, and the transmission of data from the database server to the mid-tier is minimal.
The metadata extraction function is a public method of the SQLDICOM. The method and the components involved can be implemented by a set of database stored procedures. The set of configuration documents managed by the repository 48 are part of the database installation, but can be customized by an administrator.
XML Schema Definition (XSD) for Data Types
The DICOM data types, which are called value representation (VR) in the DICOM standard, are mapped into XML schema based data types. Some DICOM VRs such as integer, float and datetime have corresponding built-in XSD data types and are straightforward to define. Some DICOM VRs such as person name and age string do not have obvious matching XML definitions and an XML schema data type needs to be defined for each of these VRs. In one embodiment, an XML schema data type incorporating features of the disclosed embodiments will facilitate the retrieval of a DICOM object based on its metadata content. For example, the VR type age string is defined in DICOM to be three digits followed by the letter "D" for day, "W" for week, "M" for month, and "Y" for year. Although a person can easily interpret this string, it is difficult to construct, implement, or perform a range search on an age string type. In the present invention, the XML schema definition for age string data type is defined to be a complex type containing the original string and an additional mandatory element "AGE_IN_DAYS", which is the age in number of days. The latter element maps to an integer type and can be used in a range search. Moreover, it can be easily indexed for efficient retrieval. The following code segment shows the definition of the VM type age string.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns="//xmlns.oracle.com/ord/dicom/datatype"
<!-- DICOM VM type Age String -->
<xs:complexType name="AS">
<xs:element name="AGE_STRING"
<xs:element name="AGE_IN_DAYS"
<xs:simpleType name="AgeString">
<xs:restriction base="xs:token">
<xs:pattern value='[0-9]{3}(D|W|M|Y)'/>
<!-- Other data type definitions are omitted -->
As is obvious from the above code segment, the XSD is defined to be strictly conformant to the DICOM VR definition. For example, an acceptable age data string is "007D", but not "007d" or "7D". Violations, such as strings longer than the defined length, will result in an XML document validation failure. Each DICOM VR type is also defined to explicitly list all subfields for convenient retrieval and improved readability. For example, when mapping the DICOM VR type person name, it is defined to be a complex type containing family name, given name, middle name, prefix and suffix. Each component is a complex type containing three subcomponents: unibyte, ideographic and phonetic. The complex type also contains an attribute that specifies person name type, which can take the value of "unibyte", "ideographic" or "phonetic".
It is necessary to special case the DICOM VR type sequence of items (SQ) and unknown (UN). The DICOM SQ type is equivalent to a universal container type. It can contain items that can be recursively SQ types. Since the containment relationship carries semantic significance, we retain the hierarchy when encoding an "SQ" attribute in XML whether an SQ type appears as a named or an unnamed attribute.
DICOM Data Dictionary
The DICOM standard defines the standard set of attributes that can be embedded in a DICOM object. To convert the metadata content of a DICOM object into XML, the group and element number (Tag), standard name (Name), value representation (VR), how many time it may repeat (VM) and whether or not it has been retired (deprecated), needs to be known about each attribute. A standard data dictionary document can be used to store this information and expose its definition to the user of the database so that they can modify this document whenever there is a change announced by the DICOM standards committee. Examples of attribute definitions are:
(0008, 0115)
Coding Scheme Name
(0008, 1000)
Network ID
The above definition will be translated into the following XML elements:
<NAME>Coding Scheme Name</NAME>
<NAME>Network ID</NAME>
At runtime, the repository 48 of
XML Mapping Document
A mapping document defines how a DICOM attribute should be encoded into an XML element of the metadata document. A default XML metadata schema and the associated mapping document 46 is provided. When an application designer overwrites the default XML metadata schema with his own, the new XML metadata schema is parsed to build a new mapping document corresponding to the new XML metadata schema. The XML mapping document contains a flat list of attribute tags and their corresponding XPath, which points out the destination of a DICOM attribute in a metadata document, as illustrated below:
In this example, the DICOM standard attribute study date that has the tag (0008,0020) maps into an XML metadata element "STUDY_DATE" at the XML tree location "/DICOM_METADATA/NAMED/STUDY/GENERAL_STUDY/". Similarly, the DICOM attribute study time maps to an XML metadata element "STUDY_TIME". Suppose the DICOM standard attribute STUDY DESCRIPTION (0008,1030) has not been listed by the XML mapping document, but exists in a DICOM object therefore appears in a DICOM metadata document, the resulting metadata document will look like the following:
<LONG_STRING definerRef="DICOM" tag="00081030"
As shown, if an attribute is not defined individually in the XML mapping document, then it is mapped to the unnamed part of the DICOM metadata document.
XML Metadata Schema Definition
The XML metadata schema and the XML mapping document must be consistent. For example, the XML metadata schema that matches the XML mapping document example in paragraph [00093] is the following:
<xs:element name="DICOM_METADATA">
<xs:element name="NAMED">
<xs:element name="STUDY">
<xs:element name="GENERAL_STUDY">
<xsd:element name="STUDY_DATE"
type="DA" minOccurs="0"
<xsd:attribute name="definerRef" fixed="DICOM"/>
<xsd:attribute name="tag" fixed="00080020"/>
<xsd:attribute name="definition" fixed="patient name"/>
<xsd:element name="STUDY_TIME"
type="TM" minOccurs="0"
<xsd:attribute name="definerRef" fixed="DICOM"/>
<xsd:attribute name="tag" fixed="00080030"/>
<xsd:attribute name="definition" fixed="study time"/>
</xs:element> <!-- GENERAL STUDY -->
</xs:element> <!-- STUDY -->
</xs:element> <!--NAMED SECTION-->
<xs:element name="UNNAMED" type=DATASET">
</xs:element> <!--UNNAMED SECTION-->
</xs:element> <!-- DICOM_METADATA-->
In the above, the unqualified data types such as "DA", "TM" and "DATASET" are all defined in the DICOM data type definition schema. The XML metadata schema can be customized by an administrator at installation time. A default metadata schema is defined that includes the attributes from the following information entity in the named section: patient, specimen, clinical trials, study, series, equipment, image, waveform, and SOP common. The rest of the DICOM standard attributes and all private attributes are encoded in the unnamed section by default. The only restriction on the schema is that it must use data types that are consistent (can be cast into) to what have been defined in the DICOM data type schema.
In general, named attributes have a structure that is semantically important. For example, the "GENERAL_STUDY" element contains a sub-element "STUDY_DATE", and the latter is an attribute qualifies the former. Having such a structure can improve the readability and usability of an XML document. One may optionally model DICOM macros and information entity definition in his own schema. The advantages of modeling them according to the DICOM standard definition is that one may enforce some level of standard conformance with XML schema alone. The disadvantage is that such schema definition is likely to be affected by the frequent changes of the DICOM standard.
Customizing the XML Metadata Schema
An administrator may easily customize the XML metadata schema. If a database application frequently queries the DICOM attribute STUDY DESCRIPTION (0008,1030), the administrator may customize the XML metadata schema to include this attribute as a named attribute. This can be easily achieved by adding an additional entry to the XML mapping document:
and an additional entry to the named section of the XML metadata schema:
<xsd:element name="STUDY_DESCRIPTION″ type=″LO″
minOccurs="0" nillable="true">
<xsd:attribute name="definerRef" fixed="DICOM"/>
<xsd:attribute name="tag" fixed="00081030"/>
<xsd:attribute name="definition" fixed="study description"/>
Note that sometimes, it is possible to automatically generate the metadata schema from a mapping document and a DICOM data dictionary.
One may annotate the XML schema to specify the mapping from XML data types to SQL types and to specify additional storage directives. The benefit of such customization is better data organization and higher performance.
Transforming an XML Document
A document may be easily transformed from one XML metadata schema into another. The transformation can be illustrated using the previous example of STUDY_DESCRIPTION. A table is created using the first schema where STUDY_DESCRIPTION is an unnamed element. If at a later time, it is determined that STUDY_DESCRIPTION is used frequently in the application and the STUDY_DESCRIPTION into the NAMED attribute section can be moved to improve code readability and the performance of retrieval. The XML mapping document and XML metadata schema is customized. A column is created and added to the original database table, and the column is bound to the new schema. The metadata documents can be transformed in the original column into the new column. Because both schemas conforms to the same data type definition, the following line can be removed from the unnamed section of the original document:
and a new line inserted in the named section of the new document:
Referring to
The value of the new element is exactly the same as the original value because both elements have the same data type. The tag in the named element has its specific name. It is not necessary to include the element attributes such as definerRef and tag, since they are specified as fixed attributes in element definitions of the XML metadata schema.
Referring to
Database initialization 602 can include loading configuration documents, including DICOM standard data dictionary, DICOM private data dictionary, XML mapping document, constraint definition documents, and preference documents, for example. The completeness and correctness of all configuration documents is validated. If the constraint document is not precompiled, the constraint module can be invoked to pre-compile the constraint definition document and the result is saved for example in the repository 48 of
An optional step can include repository customization 603. Although shown as occurring only once after Database Initialization 602, this step can occur more than once. The administrator submits one or more configuration documents to customize the repository. The repository verifies the correctness and completeness of the new configuration document. If the configuration document is invalid, the repository 48 rejects the change and returns one or more error messages. If the configuration document is valid, the new configuration document will be stored in the repository 48. Examples of customization of configuration documents can include for example:
Depending on the design, the changes can be effective at the next user connection or immediately after the configuration document is validated and accepted by the repository.
After the repository customization is complete, data loading 604 (runtime) takes place. In one embodiment, data loading 604 can comprise using SQL*Loader or other suitable methods to load DICOM images into a user defined schema and tables (BLOB column). Data loading can also include creating a database object to manage DICOM objects when uploading DICOM images into a database table.
DICOM object management and processing 605 (runtime) can include the user connecting to the database schema storing DICOM objects. The DICOM package (runtime) is initialized by initializing the repository, and creating an in-memory copy of the configuration document. The DICOM package stored procedure static initialization can optionally include creating in-memory data structures. DICOM management and processing functions can be invoked on one or more DICOM objects stored in the database. Completion of the DICOM processing session can include for example, reclaiming system resources allocated during the initialization of the DICOM package and the user ending the database connection.
DICOM object management and processing functions (runtime) can include parsing the DICOM attributes, encoding the DICOM attributes into XML and returning the XML encoding of the DICOM attribute. The DICOM object can be stored in a database column of type BLOB, BFILE, or a predefined SQL object type. Optionally, the DICOM object may also be stored at an external location pointed to by, for example a URL, in which case the content will first be imported into a temporary LOB before reading.
Referring to
Because our XSD does not strictly enforce standard conformance, a non-conformant DICOM object may be transformed into a non-conformant XML document and vice versa. If one would like to enforce standard conformance, one shall use a constraint document to specify and enforce conformance rules.
The present invention may also include software and computer programs incorporating the process steps and instructions described above that are executed in different computers.
Computer systems 800 and 802 may also include a microprocessor for executing stored programs. Computer 800 may include a data storage device 806 on its program storage device for the storage of information and data. The computer program or software incorporating the processes and method steps incorporating features of the present invention may be stored in one or more computers 800 and 802 on an otherwise conventional program storage device. In one embodiment, computers 800 and 802 may include a user interface 807, and a display interface 808 from which features of the present invention can be accessed. In one embodiment, the user interface 807 and the display interface 808 comprise a single device or graphical user interface. The user interface 807 and the display interface 808 can be adapted to allow the input of queries and commands to the system, as well as present the results of the commands and queries.
The disclosed embodiments define an XML schema definitions of the metadata for managing DICOM objects in a database. The advanced schema satisfies the requirements of compactness, extensibility for accommodating standard updates and customization, and atomicity. One schema is used to represent all DICOM objects and ensures correct data movement between XML and DICOM. Attributes of a DICOM object are managed by introducing a new classification of DICOM attributes that include shared attributes and application specific attributes. The disclosed embodiments provide precise one to one lossless mapping, ensure standard conformance and a fully constrained XML schema definition for application specific attributes.
|Cited Patent
|Filing date
|Publication date
|Mar 27, 2001
|Apr 20, 2004
|Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
|DICOM XML DTD/schema generator
|Dec 15, 1998
|Aug 29, 2006
|International Business Machines Corporation
|Method, system and computer program product for storing transliteration and/or phonetic spelling information in a text string class
|Dec 19, 2001
|Dec 12, 2006
|International Business Machines Corporation
|Method, system and program product for extracting essence from a multimedia file received in a first format, creating a metadata file in a second file format and using a unique identifier assigned to the essence to access the essence and metadata file
|Jul 24, 2001
|Feb 21, 2002
|Gendron David Pierre
|Routing medical images within a computer network
|Jan 12, 2001
|Jun 13, 2002
|Helgeson Christopher S.
|Method and apparatus for managing data exchange among systems in a network
|Dec 18, 2001
|Jun 27, 2002
|Cora Alisuag
|Computer oriented record administration system
|Mar 27, 2001
|Oct 3, 2002
|Lee Kwok Pun
|DICOM to XML generator
|Nov 29, 2002
|Jun 3, 2004
|Agency For Science, Technology And Research
|Method and apparatus for creating medical teaching files from image archives
|Apr 10, 2002
|Oct 14, 2004
|Bargeron David M.
|Common annotation framework
|Jun 8, 2004
|Dec 30, 2004
|Koji Taniguchi
|System and method of data transmission/reception
|Mar 5, 2004
|Sep 22, 2005
|Nortel Networks Limited
|Method and apparatus for extracting information from a medical image
|May 17, 2005
|Jan 19, 2006
|Mci, Inc.
|Automated message handling system
|Aug 24, 2005
|Mar 23, 2006
|Debarshi Datta
|System and method for utilizing a DICOM structured report for workflow optimization
|Jun 4, 2004
|Dec 14, 2006
|The Trustees Of The University Of Pennsylvania
|Ndma db schema, dicom to relational schema translation, and xml to sql query transformation
|Jun 30, 2006
|Jan 3, 2008
|John Colang
|Framework for storage and transmission of medical images
|Citing Patent
|Filing date
|Publication date
|Nov 21, 2007
|Apr 10, 2012
|Mawell Scandinavia Ab
|Method and system for sharing data between radiology information systems
|Feb 9, 2007
|Apr 24, 2012
|General Electric Company
|Methods and apparatus for including customized CDA attributes for searching and retrieval
|Feb 22, 2010
|Aug 6, 2013
|Siemens Aktiengesellschaft
|Automatic study linking for hybrid imaging
|Nov 28, 2011
|Aug 5, 2014
|Merge Healthcare Incorporated
|Remote cine viewing of medical images on a zero-client application
|Feb 3, 2010
|Feb 3, 2015
|Siemens Aktiengesellschaft
|System for archiving composite files and method for operating such a system
|Jan 15, 2013
|Jul 21, 2015
|Xiaofan Zhou
|Method for representing and storing hierarchical data in a columnar format
|Sep 30, 2011
|Oct 20, 2015
|Emc Corporation
|System and method of rolling upgrades of data traits
|Oct 23, 2013
|May 3, 2016
|Emc Corporation
|System and method of dynamic data object upgrades
|Jul 16, 2014
|May 10, 2016
|Merge Healthcare Incorporated
|Remote cine viewing of medical images on a zero-client application
|Sep 15, 2006
|Jan 3, 2017
|Oracle International Corporation
|Techniques for checking whether a complex digital object conforms to a standard
|Dec 6, 2011
|Jan 3, 2017
|Microsoft Technology Licensing, Llc
|Metadata extraction pipeline
|Sep 6, 2013
|Apr 18, 2017
|TransMed Systems, Inc.
|Metadata automated system
|Apr 25, 2014
|Apr 25, 2017
|Bank Of America Corporation
|Data load process
|May 4, 2016
|Apr 25, 2017
|Merge Healthcare Incorporated
|Remote cine viewing of medical images on a zero-client application
|Sep 15, 2006
|Mar 20, 2008
|Oracle International Corporation
|Techniques for checking whether a complex digital object conforms to a standard
|Nov 21, 2007
|Jun 12, 2008
|Mawell Svenska Ab
|Method and system for sharing data between radiology information systems
|Feb 9, 2007
|Aug 14, 2008
|Czaplewski Jeff P
|Methods and apparatus for including customized cda attributes for searching and retrieval
|Feb 3, 2010
|Aug 4, 2011
|Detlef Becker
|System for archiving composite files and method for operating such a system
|Feb 22, 2010
|Aug 25, 2011
|Frank Hirschbeck
|Automatic study linking for hybrid imaging
|Apr 7, 2010
|Aug 2, 2012
|Omnifone Ltd.
|Database schema complexity reduction
|Sep 30, 2011
|Apr 4, 2013
|Emc Corporation
|System and method of rolling upgrades of data traits
|Dec 11, 2013
|Jul 24, 2014
|Xiaofan Zhou
|Method for representing and storing hierarchical data in a columnar format
|Oct 26, 2015
|Apr 28, 2016
|Baxter Corporation Englewood
|Automated exchange of healthcare information for fulfillment of medication doses
|U.S. Classification
|707/803, 707/999.1
|International Classification
|Cooperative Classification
|European Classification
|Nov 23, 2005
Owner name: ORACLE INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION, CALIFORNIA
Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNOR:GUO, DONGBAI;REEL/FRAME:017246/0945
Effective date: 20051122
|Aug 9, 2011
|Certificate of correction
|May 14, 2014
|Fee payment
Year of fee payment: 4


text:
Lord Voldemort Orders a Pizza
(or tries)
Lord Voldemort was feeling peckish.
It had been a year to the day of Potter's defeat. The boy had fought bravely and skillfully, but, in the end, he had fallen like so many others before him.
Still, the boy had spunk, and Lord Voldemort could respect that.
Harry Potter had been a respectable, worthy opponent and the anniversary of the victory merited something... special.
His stomach growled fiercely, demanding food. Lord Voldemort lounged languorously on his throne of human bones. He stroked his white chin with his long, skeletal fingers, trying to remember the contents of the refrigerator.
Last night's dinner of roasted goblin might provide left-overs, but Lord Voldemort didn't DO leftovers. Not since he was a young boy in a muggle orphanage...
The painful memories brought a bitter scowl to his face. A flash of memories assaulted his mind at once of loud, noisy and disgusting children all crowded around a dirty table, fighting each other for scraps.
With a chuckle of amusement he remembered his first controlled magical burst. He'd broken Sally Munkin's arm for grabbing the last piece of chicken.
No, save for the day they celebrated the young Lord Voldemort's imminent departure from their ramshackle orphanage, there were no culinary delights in that muggle hell.
Save for the day they had pizza.
"WORMTAIL!" Voldemort bellowed. The strength of his voice rocked the walls of Slytherin Castle. The tall doors of the throne room opened slowly, a rotund, sniveling coward of a man shuffled into the room and prostrated himself before his Lord, quivering inside his black robes.
"Y-yes, my lord?"
"Worm, you are a coward." Voldemort declared after a minute's pause (in which he delighted in wormtail's aggregating fear).
"Yes, my Lord. I am sorry." Wormtail replied. Voldemort sighed.
"Worm, bring me the telephone and the phonebook." Lord Voldemort commanded, practically giddy in his anticipation. Of course, he showed no outward signs of it. Lord Voldemort simply doesn't do 'giddy'.
Wormtail returned with a stylish telephone made of solid gold, the old fashioned dial mounted on the base. Under his silver arm rested a yellow book.
"Now go to the entrance hall, worm, and wait. All will become clear." Lord Voldemort spoke enigmatically.
Wormtail, eager to be away from his Lord who terrified him so, turned to flee for the door. A bolt of lightning caught him in the small of the back, throwing him to the floor and sending waves of agony through his body.
"Worm, you don't turn your back on your Lord." Voldemort explained cruelly, pocketing his wand. "Now begone." He said to the smoking wizard, who all but crawled to the door.
When the coward had left, Lord Voldemort flicked the book open with his long fingers, his blood red eyes scanned the pages.
Luigi's or Max's? There were several chain restaurants listed, but Lord Voldemort wanted something special, something made with care, just for him...
After a moment's pause, he made his decision. He would order from both, and the slowest to deliver would die. Satisfied that his plan was sufficiently diabolical, he lifted the golden telephone to his lap and began the long process of dialing the number.
"Thank you for calling Luigi's this is Max, how may I help you." A voice on the other end of the phone spoke into Lord Voldemort's ear.
Lord Voldemort, for the first time in a long time, knew not what to say.
LV: "Pizza, I want pizza."
Max: "Rrright... pick-up? Delivery? Dine-in? Which is it, man?"
Man? The impertinence!
LV: "Delivery!"
Max: "Alright man, no need to shout, nice and easy now. What's your name, guy?"
LV: "Lord Voldemort."
Max: "Lord Voldemo-"
LV: "Don't speak my name, you filthy muggle!"
Max: silence
The noise was so loud that Lord Voldemort distanced himself from the ear-piece with a flinch. Why, that fucking muggle! Nobody hangs up on Lord Voldemort!
Knowing what he must do, Lord Voldemort dialed the number again, a manic grin threatening to split his face in two.
"Thank you for calling Luigi's, this is Max, how can I help you." That fucking muggle spoke, not knowing that event's were already in motion that would culminate in his agonizing death.
LV: "Delivery." With a pained grimmace, Lord Voldemort lowered his voice and added, "Please." hoping to hell that none of his Death Eaters heard him say please to a muggle. He reassured himself by fantasizing about killing Max, and eating delicious pizza to celebrate his triumph.
Max: "Right-o, name please?"
LV: "John Smith." Voldemort snickered.
Max: "Okay Mr. Smith, I'll need your address."
LV: "Slytherin Castle."
Max: pause ... silence ... "I'm sorry?"
Lord Voldemort cursed.
LV: "The big castle on the hill, above town."
Max: "Umm... kay. Phone number?"
The words struck fear into the heart of Lord Voldemort. Phone number? How the fuck should he know his phone number?
"WORMTAIL! GET IN HERE, NOW!" He bellowed, the telephone forgotten. Wormtail all but flew into the room. "Master! I'm here!" He gasped, holding the stitch in his side.
"What's my phone number, worm?" Lord Voldemort asked quickly, a comical look of hope on his face. His hopes sunk like a baby in a lake however when he saw the blank look of horror on Worm's face.
"Crucio! LORD VOLDEMORT DOES NOT TOLERATE IGNORANCE!"
LV: "Umm, I don't know the number."
Max: "I heard what you said. You're that Lord freak from before. Stop pranking us!"
"Worm. Go to Luigi's pizzeria. Kill the muggle named Max. Burn the place."
There was nothing for it. Lord Voldemort would have to go with his second choice, Max's Pizza.
Max's Pizza: "Thank you for calling Max's pizza, this is a Luigi! What can I get for you, eh?"
LV: "Are you FUCKING with me?"
Luigi: "Excuse me?"
LV: "It matters not, muggle. Lord Voldemort wants pizza. Delivery."
Luigi: silence ... "Okay. One delivery for Lord Voldmart."
LV: "Lord Vol-DE-Mort!"
Luigi: "Err... ok, Lord Voldemort."
LV: "Don't say the name."
Luigi: pause ... "Phone number, sir?"
LV: "Irrelevant."
Luigi: "I need a number, sir."
LV: "You will be compensated well to bend the rules in this matter, muggle."
Luigi: "Are you a playing Luigi?"
LV: "I require a large cheese and pepperoni. And, ah yes, a side order of the spicy buffalo wings."
Luigi: "Very good, sir. Address?"
LV: "Slytherin Castle. On the hill above town."
Luigi: "Anything to drink for you tonight, Mr. Voldermort?"
LV: "Not necessary, muggle. I have a fresh litre of dragon's blood."
Luigi: "Err... right. It'll be there in thirty minutes or it's free."
LV: "It'll be twenty minutes or you'll be crucio'ed."
Luigi: "Errr... right. Thanks for calling."
Fucking muggles... "Wormtail!"
Wormtail re-entered the throne room, dark blood stained his robes. "Did you kill the pizza guy, wormtail?" Voldemort inquired.
"Y-yes, my lord. He screamed most magnificently." Wormtail answered, his voice aquiver.
"And did you bring back pizza, worm?"
The look of horror on wormtail's face answered the question more completely than any words possibly could. Lord Voldemort sighed.
"Take the invisibility cloak. Go to Max's pizzeria, steal the first pepperoni pizza that comes out of the oven. Don't fail me, worm, or you shall feel my wrath."
"Y-yes, my Lord." Wormtail murmured, carefully bowing out of the room.
The telephone book burst into flames in his hands, quickly reducing itself to ashes. He chucked the phone across the hall, where it skidded with a clatter across the floor.
And Lord Voldemort wondered, not for the first time, why such simple matters always became so difficult.
But if Lord Voldemort could be certain of one thing, he was certain of this: He wasn't eating any fucking leftover goblin.


text: Arts & CultureVideo: Focus on Japan dolphin hunt Controversial documentary highlights the hunting of dolphins in the town of Taiji. 21 Oct 2009 05:28 GMT | Arts & Culture, Asia Pacific After much debate, the Tokyo Film Festival has decided to screen The Cove, a controversial documentary about the annual dophin hunt in the Japanese town of Taiji. The film-makers have used hidden cameras and mini-helicopters to get close-up footage of the hunt. The documentary has put pressure on residents and fishermen in Taiji. But as Al Jazeera's Harry Fawcett witnesses upon his visit to the town, the slaughter continues.Source: Al Jazeera


text:
Alright, so unless the peoples are lying the new rotation doesn't leave me much to work with in the way of mages. Fiddlesticks and LeBlanc. I'm sure there will be a lot of LeBlancs running around out there considering she's the new shit and Fiddlesticks also appears to be something of a popular character.
So what does that leave for me? Well, with the free week of Heimer out of the way I should be able to use him alot and maybe just build up a lot of IP. I could also take the oppurtunity to get to know Rammus and Trynd a bit more.
The champs that I think I will test the most will probably be Zilean and maybe Sivir. Zilean is a dude I've tried once or twice and kind of liked him but never really worked at it much. And Sivir is apparently bad ass now so I might as well see what all the fuss is about.
So here's the plan:
2)Heimer (make mo' money)
Alrighty then. Get some.
Oh yeah, and 6) Teemo. I never used a stealth champ before.
Peace out.