The department where I will be doing my clinical training has many different

types of software that are used on a daily basis. For example, the computers that are used
by each employee in the radiation oncology department run on a Windows 7 operating
system, which is an essential component that controls how the computer operates. Other
needed software includes Aria and Eclipse, which are the treatment delivery and
treatment planning software. These programs allow for the storage of multiple patient
care records in one place including past medical dictation, imaging results, and treatment
details. Velocity is another software program utilized for treatment planning. This
program is used primarily for doing deformable registrations in the event that a patients
image fusion is not turning out well using the rigid registration that is available in
Eclipse. Velocity is also utilized for combining dose from multiple plans and compiling
a summation, which is very useful in determining how much dose a structure has
received or if it may be close to reaching its dose tolerance. IMSure is a software
program used within our clinic to perform dose calculations on all photon treatments.
Finally, picture archiving and communication system (PACS) is a key piece of software.
PACS is a medical imaging technology that is used for storing, retrieving, presenting, and
sharing images produced by multiple modalities including nuclear medicine, MRI, CT,
Ultrasound, and x-ray.1 Using PACS we are able to obtain a patients imaging studies that
we wish to fuse with our own CT scan for treatment planning purposes.
I was unsure of what type of network our facility used until speaking with one of
our medical physicists who explained that we use Health Level 7 (HL7). The level
seven refers to the seventh layer of the open systems interconnect (OSI) model, which is
the application level.2 With this layer, an application can send a request to an application
that has a different host and ask it to perform an action.3 This type of design is extremely
important in health care because of the growing need to share information. Information
is shared daily in our department using this network and one example is when images are
sent from CT and are available for import in our dosimetry office.

1. Rouse M. PACS (picture archiving and communication system).

http://searchhealthit.techtarget.com/definition/picture-archiving-and-communication-
system-PACS. Updated August 2017. Accessed October 23, 2017.

2. Health Level Seven International. About HL7.

http://www.hl7.org/about/index.cfm?ref=common. Accessed October 23, 2017.

3. MacLennan G. Networking. [SoftChalk]. La Crosee, WI: UW-L Medical Dosimetry

Program; 2017.