DATA COERCION

n Go to the Administration Page.
n Click the Devices Tab.
n Add a new device, or click the Edit button, , of an existing DICOM device.
n Scroll to the data coercion section.
n
Define rules and click Save.


Data coercion forces defined value into specific fields that the modality may not have included in the object.  The data coercion engine supports three modes: 1) overwrite a DICOM attribute with a defined value; 2) assign one DICOM attribute value to another DICOM attribute; and 3) parse the contents of one DICOM attribute and assign part of it to another DICOM attribute.  At this time, coercion works for DICOM alpha-numeric attributes only.

Coercion rules get assigned to a specific registered device, and are applied to all DICOM C-STORE messages that arrive from that device.  Multiple rules can exist for a single device, and they are applied in the defined sequence.  For example, if the admin wants to swap two values, he must define a three-step process: assign the value from one attribute to a temporary attribute, copy the value from the second attribute to the first attribute, and then copy the value in the temporary attribute to the second attribute.

To define coercion rules, go to the Devices page and click on the edit button of the device in the Devices table.  At the bottom of the DICOM Services page, the format of each rule is explained in the legend.  If you need the DICOM tag for a particular attribute, select it from the pull-down menu and click on Add Tag.  If the attribute is not available, enter it directly into the text box.  Complete the rule by typing the rest of the command.  When you have completed all the rules, click on Save.  Note that these rules do not propagate between linked servers.