Troubleshooting: IMPAX accepts incoming images matching an existing SOP instance UID

Issue

When an image is sent to IMPAX while another image with the same SOP Instance UID already exists in IMPAX, the expected behavior in IMPAX 6.5.1 is to reject the incoming image. If you do not see this expected behavior, there is a risk that pre-existing images in cache could be overwritten.

Details

In previous releases of IMPAX, images on SAN/NAS could be overwritten due to status cached. That is, it was possible to have IMPAX replace the pre-existing image in cache with the newly received image. If the pre-existing image was archived, however, the archived copy of the image was not replaced.

In configurations where the IMPAX caches are SAN (Storage Area Network) or NAS (Network Attached Storage), there are no archives. In these configurations, there was a significant risk that pre-existing images in cache could be overwritten at any time if a new image with the same SOP Instance UID (by modalities recycling UIDs, manual intervention, etc.) was sent to IMPAX.

All IMPAX releases since IMPAX 5.2 include a database column in DOSR_AE called 'allow_duplicate', which controls whether to use the old behavior of silently accepting duplicates or to prevent duplicates from entering IMPAX. If the value is set to 'T' or 't' then IMPAX allows duplicate images from that AE title. If the value is any other value, IMPAX uses the default value of false, which prevents duplicates from entering into IMPAX.

Solution

If IMPAX does not reject incoming images with the same SOP instance UID, verify the 'allow_duplicate' column in DOSR_AE is set to blank (this defaults to FALSE). Note this column is set to false, by default, for each AE title.

Use CLUI to modify this column in the database. Only knowledgeable Service Engineers should perform this modification.