Creating Custom Fields

Custom Fields

What are Custom Fields:

Cimar offers an easy way to customise the cloud to each account's specific needs with custom fields in all commonly used areas of the platform in the form of custom fields.

Custom fields are a way for a user to store specific data to studies, users, patients, case, order and appointments that the platform may not originally offer. What you can do with the data depends on the type of field. As an example if you were to add a study custom field you could pull data into the field using DICOM, HL7 or manual input, you can also use the custom fields to populate the DICOM tags.

As you can see in the example above I have created several different types of study custom fields, some will pull from the DICOM, some are manually input and some are not populatable until a report has been created.

A further example would be when using a user custom field. User Custom fields are visible against each users record in the account and can be used to store custom specific data such as GMC number or external system staff ID's. These values can then be written back into reports. An example of a user custom field can be seen below.

Creating a custom field:

1. Navigate to Administration -> Custom fields and click new custom field as pictured above.

2. The first field is the name of the custom field, this is a reference name for Cimar and will not be visible against each study. Enter a name for your custom field.

3. Select your association for your custom field, in this case we want Study but this is a dropdown of all the different types of custom fields you can create.

4. There are several field types we can select from as shown below, for this example I will pick Text but there is a lot more you can do such as:

Text - Grants you a text box on your study.

Text Area - Grants you a limited size text area which you can predefine later in the custom field settings. Note how the example given has a limit of 7 characters, spaces count as a character, once reached it will not accept any more text.

Number - The user can only enter a number

Date - The user can select a date

Dropdown - You can predefine values in your custom field for a user to select in a dropdown box.

Multi-Select - Predefine several fields to select, the user can then shift click to select as many as they deem necessary.

Radio - Allows you to select a predefined option, similar to having several tick boxes .

Checkbox - A simple check box, allows you to tick or untick, looks like this:

Boolean - Is almost identical to checkbox, looks very similar but basically asks for a true or false value (ticked or unticked)

Once you have filled all these fields out, your custom field should look something like this

5. Once you are through these three mandatory fields you will notice several tick boxes that you can use, these tick boxes will vary depending on what association you have chosen and are not mandatory. But for the study association this is what is available and what they do.

Custom field is required - In order to upload/edit the study, this custom field must have data.

Use only with wrapped DICOM - if you have uploaded non-DICOM studies then this field will be available, otherwise it will not.

Use only with DICOM (non-wrapped) - If you have uploaded a DICOM study then this field will be available, otherwise it will not.

Show on ImageShare upload form - Not only will this field be available on standard upload and edit but now If you're uploading via share code link then this field will be available.

Show on Query retrieve form - Custom field will be available on the query retrieve form.

Set value from DICOM tag - Custom field will map to a later specified DICOM tag and pull the data. If the DICOM tag said the patient is "MALE" then the custom field will say "MALE"

Ignore empty custom fields when mapping to DICOM tags - When mapping to DICOM tags, if the custom field is empty then it will be ignored.

Set value from order related custom field - If you have a custom field which has the Order association type then you will be able to tick that box and select from the dropdown which one, the data will then be stored in this custom field as well against the study.

6. Finally, the last thing that you will require is to set the field label, this is what the user will see on the study for the name of the custom field.

Set custom field from DICOM tag:

1. Create your study custom field as shown earlier in this article.

2. Using the tick boxes available, tick set value from DICOM tag.

Doing this will allow you to set the custom field on your interface to data in a specified DICOM tag.

3. Next enter the DICOM tag that you wish to map from by using the Map to DICOM tag setting. This setting will search the metadata for the DICOM tag specified which in this case is (0008, 0080) and input the value from it to the custom field. Therefore whenever a study is uploaded, if the DICOM tag (0008, 0080) is populated in the metadata then it will pull the contained data and paste it into your new custom field on your study as pictured below.

The DICOM tag data will now be pulled into the custom field and be displayed in the worklist as such.

Set DICOM tag from custom field:

1. Create a study custom field as show earlier in this article

2. Enter the DICOM tag you wish to update by entering the specific tag into the Map to DICOM tag setting. Because we've not ticked set value from DICOM tag this will instead do the opposite because we've given it a DICOM tag to map to. Therefore whatever value I put into this custom field now will update to the DICOM tag, so wherever it is viewed the DICOM tag with my new data will be present.

There are many more things to do with custom fields in Cimar, The possibilities with custom fields are endless, for questions about custom fields and general support queries, please contact support@cimar.co.uk for assistance.

Creating User Custom Field:

1. Navigate to Administration -> Custom fields and click new custom field as pictured above.

2. Enter a name for your custom field to be referred to.

3. Select your association for your custom field, in this case we want User. This is a dropdown of all the different types of custom fields you can create.

4. Select your field type for this example we will pick Text.

Once this is done your field may look something like this.

5. Once again you have your tick boxes, this time however there is only two. Please select if you want the field to be mandatory and if you want it available to only the Admins.

6. Enter the field label name.

7. Click save. Then navigate to your personal account information located in the top right of the screen, this will typically be your name. Scroll down until you locate the field you just created, enter any data you need to for the field, in this instance an ID. This can then be saved and used throughout the account, an example might be on a report template you might want the user ID of the user who created the report, which is where this custom field would be useful!