Understanding Hanging Protocols

Hanging protocols determine how medical images are shown to health workers.

Medical imaging equipment, and the computers that process those images after they are taken during medical tests, need to present the images in a way that prevents health workers from getting confused. Hanging protocols are the conventions usually followed to present medical images in a clear and consistent way. Those conventions are generally accepted and followed by devices from different manufacturers across the industry. You can understand the ways in which hanging protocols display a given set of images.

Instructions

1. Interpret images displayed in a horizontal row and in the absence of delimiters or separators as being presented in a temporal sequence, with the least recent at the left end and the most recent at the right end.

2. Interpret images enclosed by a box or some other kind of delimiter as having been taken during the same test, that is, within a short time period.

3. Interpret images displayed on a vertical column as corresponding to different views of the same patient's body, taken during the same test. This is usually done when results of a separate test are shown on the same screen, on another column aligned image-by-image with the first one.

References

• National Electrical Manufacturers Association: DICOM Hanging Protocols