DoctorZ 1.0.1 Users Manual

Copyright (C) 2002, Pascal Scheffers <Pascal@Scheffers.Net>

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Getting Started
  3. Getting Your First Image
  4. Viewing Images
  5. Your Images Account
  6. Viewer Settings
  7. Know Issues
  8. Licencing Information

Introduction

Thank you for downloading DoctorZ. DoctorZ is Free Software published under the GNU General Public Licence. This is important for you, the user, as this gives you the right to copy, modify and distribute DoctorZ free of charge. I also feel that it is important to know that this software comes with NO WARANTIES whatsoever: You are already getting more than you payed for! It works for us, though, we hope it works for you. If it doesn't, feel free to ask for help.

But enough of that. DoctorZ is a Medical Imaging Client for the Sharp Zaurus PDA. You can also call it a 'Tele Medicine Application' or 'Remote Consultation Application' or 'Great General Purpose Image Viewer'. It is meant to be the final link in a set of tools that enable you, the expert, to look at medical images from ultra sound, MRI and other DICOM enabled equipment. Or any other type of image source that you manage to upload to the central server, which isn't very hard with any destop computer.

DoctorZ downloads images from a central server and lets you view them on your PDA. Combined with current mobile phone networks and wireless lan technology you can help your colleagues diagnose problems almost anywhere in the world, whenever you want.

When you are viewing an image you can use several easy to use tools to evaluate the image. You can scroll through the image by dragging it, adjust brightness and contrast, zoom in and out and apply artificial coloring to assess the problem. Everything you need is just one pen stroke away. Table of Contents

Getting Started

The first thing you need to do is install the software. You can get the latest version of DoctorZ from http://pascal.scheffers.net/doctorz/. If you are reading this on your Zaurus, chances are good that you don't have to install a thing! After you install the doctorz.ipk (see your Zaurus Users Manual on how to install software on your Zaurus), you will find a new icon in your applications tab. Click that and DoctorZ starts.

You are now all set to start using DoctorZ.

Getting Your First Image

When you first start DoctorZ, you will be presented with the download-from-the-internet dialog. This screen invites you to hit the refresh button to update the list of images that are available online. If you have an internet connection from your Zaurus, you can indeed hit refresh and a list of sample images will be presented to you. Select one of the images by clicking on it and hit the download button. After a couple of seconds you should see an image appear on your screen. It is as simple as that!

But I don't have a network connection! Well, to take maximum benefit from DoctorZ you should really connect your Zaurus directly to the Internet. You can do this with your Sync Cradle, a (wireless) lan CF card, an infrared link with your mobile phone or even a Bluetooth link to your mobile phone. There are plenty of options. In the mean time, though, you can just send some images to your Zaurus by syncing or inserting a memory card from a digital camera into your zaurus with some images on them (any will do).

You can view images stored on your Zaurus by hitting the 'Open' icon (circled in red) or by using 'File::Open' (circled in green). You will then be presented with a list of images on your Zaurus, just select one and it will be displayed. The 'Open' icon actually toggles between the download window and the stored images list.

Now that you have an image on screen, use your pen to drag it around. Assuming the image you are viewing is bigger than your screen, of course. Table of Contents

Viewing Images

Now you have a test image on screen, you can try all the image controls: It is important to know that the Zaurus is not a fast desktop computer but a handheld computer. This means that all these actions actually take noticable time on your zaurus, where as on your destop computer you would not even notice it happening. Please be patient, something is happening! You can always check by trying to move the image by dragging your pen over the image: if it doesn't move, something else if happening. This is especially true for larger images. Viewing Images Table of Contents

Zooming

You can zoom the image by using these four icons. When you click the first, '1:1', the image will be displayed at 100%. Most of the time, this is far to big for the small Zaurus screen. The next two icons, '-' and '+', let you shrink and enlarge the image. By default, the image gets smaller and bigger in steps of 20%. The fourth and last icon is the 'shrink to fit' icon, which will zoom the image to entirely on the screen. Note that if your keep zooming in on your image, your Zaurus will probably run out of memory and terminate DoctorZ. The larger you display your image, the longer other actions take. Viewing Images Table of Contents

Brightness & Contrast

Brightness and contrast are special. You won't find visible controls for them anywhere on the screen in this version. You don't really need them, as the applying brightness and contrast is really simple. Take a look at the image at the right. You'll see two yellow/black stripes on the left and righthand side of the screen. These are the Brightness/Contrast control regions, the one on the left controls brightness, the right controls contrast. Brightness and contrast take anywhere from half a second to several seconds to perform.

Both controls work exactly the same, you start somewhere in the in the arched areas and move your pen up and release to increase brightness or contrast and down and release to decrease them. 'Woa! Isn't that is hard, staying inside the arched areas?' I hear you say. Well, you don't have to! The important bit is that you start inside the arched area and you end somewhere near or in the arched area. Look at the image to the right, the red line shows a 'perfect' brightness stroke. Very commendable eye/hand coordination indeed! Except, DoctorZ doesn't care. Take a look at the green line, for DoctorZ this is a 'perfect' contrast stroke: it starts in the contrast region and ends somewhere near it. Each new stroke increases or decreases the setting some more.
The blue line shows one final important move: reset contrast. You start inside the contrast area, move to the middle and release the pen. To reset brightness, you do the same starting in the brightness area, move to the middle and release. Viewing Images Table of Contents

Rotating

Rotating your image can be handy at times, just click the rotate icon to rotate 90 degrees clockwise. Each click rotates a further 90 degrees clockwise. Viewing Images Table of Contents

Zoom Quality

Zoom quality can be important for images with a lot of edges in them. Most medical images look just fine using the fast zoom algorithm, but when you're looking at something with lots of sharp edges (like letters) you can hit the Quality icon to use a better but much slower zoom algorithm. Each time you hit the icon, you toggle high quality on or off. Setting high quality will make all other actions slower too! Viewing Images Table of Contents

Colorisations

Colorisations help pick you out details that your eye can't see using grayscale images. By hitting the colorisation icon you'll cycle though brownish, greenish and normal display. It may seem trivial, but your eye is just better at picking out detail in some colors than others. Viewing Images Table of Contents

Your Images Account

Now that you know how to view images, you need to specify what to get and where to keep it. You do that on the account tab if the preferences dialog, which you find in the file menu. The preferences open on the view settings. More on those later, first, click on 'account' at the top.

You'll find five settings here, three of which you need to modify. The first is username. This is the name of the account you have on http://pascal.scheffers.net/, which will almost certainly be the same as your email address.

You also need to set your password, again, the same password your use for pascal.scheffers.net.

You can skip the 'URL' and 'wget binary' settings, you only need to change those if you need to specify a different images server.

Finally, you can specify where you'll be downloading your images to. By default, everything is stored in internal memory. Internal storage is not unlimited, so you may want to choose to store your images on a Compact Flash memory card or an SecureDigital/MMC card. It's up to you. Table of Contents

Viewer Settings

The view settings determine how DoctorZ behaves by default. There are four different items you can customise.

The initial view, 'start with', is either 'download window' or 'downloaded images'. This determines what happens when you start DoctorZ or hit the 'Open Folder' icon. If you intend to use DoctorZ as your image viewer, you had best set it to 'Downloaded images'.

Zoom step determines by how many percent the '+' and '-' zoom icons increase/decrease the zoom level.

Initial zoom determines how images will be displayed when you first open them. There are three special options and six different percantages to choose from:

Default zoom quality if you prefer the 'high quality zoom', you can set this to 'smooth'. This will turn on the 'high quality zoom' whenever you open an image. Table of Contents

Know Issues

These are some things we are aware of that make DoctorZ less than perfect: There must be other problems, if you find them please tell me: Pascal@Scheffers.Net Table of Contents

Licencing Information

This software is licenced under the GNU General Public Licence:
DoctorZ - Medical Imaging Client, Telemedicine, Image Viewer
Copyright (C) 2002, Pascal Scheffers

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA

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Copyright (C) 2002, Pascal Scheffers <Pascal@Scheffers.Net>