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How Adva Computes Relevant Prior Studies

When you open a study, AdvaPACS automatically identifies up to five prior studies that are likely to be useful for comparison. Here's how it works.

Step 1 — Understanding what the study is about​

Before any comparison happens, AdvaPACS reads each study's description and works out what anatomy was imaged, which modality was used, and whether a specific side of the body is involved. It normalises this information into a consistent format so that studies can be fairly compared regardless of how they were originally labelled — for example, "X-RAY", "XRAY", and "X-Ray" are all treated the same way.

Step 2 — Finding studies worth comparing​

Once the anatomy is understood, AdvaPACS looks at your prior studies and asks: would this study be useful to have open alongside the current one? It uses anatomy as the primary basis for this decision, with a few important principles:

  • Anatomy doesn't need to be an exact match. A chest CT and a lung study are considered relevant to each other, because the lungs are part of the chest.
  • Relevance works in both directions independently. A prior chest CT might be relevant when you open a new lung study — but that doesn't automatically mean the reverse is true.
  • Left versus right side is not used to exclude a study. A prior left knee MR is still considered relevant when you open a right knee MR.
  • Different regions of the spine are treated as distinct. A lumbar spine study will not be surfaced as a prior for a cervical spine study.

What you see as a result​

The top 5 studies that score as relevant are surfaced automatically in the viewer as your relevant priors, saving you from manually searching through a patient's history to find useful comparisons.

A note on customisation​

The matching rules can be adjusted for your organisation's specific clinical workflows. If you find that certain study types are being surfaced that aren't useful, or that relevant studies are being missed, that feedback can be used to tune the behaviour for your site.