Prefetching by specialty: Concepts

When creating prefetching rules, you can select specialties the rules should apply to. If using this option, keep in mind that matching rules defined in the Specialty Manager also affect the prefetching rules. You can control prefetching based on a combination of acquisition station and specialty. This can be fine-tuned over time. If you establish precise specialty matching rules, prefetching will be more efficient.

Prefetching rules are based on the specialties and are then sub-grouped based on modality. The user can associate prefetching across multiple modalities within the same specialty. An example of this would be prefetching previous CHEST work for an incoming CT and basing the prefetch on the specialty. The Relevant Priors Manager table would contain the following entries:

Modality	Specialty	Same modality	Same specialty
CT	CHEST	N	Y

The system would determine which previous exams match the specialty designation and populate the cache with the previous chest work for comparison reasons.

If the site wants to apply specific prefetching rules by modality, the prefetching table would contain multiple entries for the same specialty but vary by modality. For example, if the site has a collective grouping of NEURO exams but wants to apply different prefetching rules to CT than to other modalities, the Relevant Priors Manager table would contain the following entries:

Modality	Specialty	Same modality	Same specialty
MR	NEURO	N	Y
CR	NEURO	N	Y
CT	NEURO	Y	Y

The specialty assigned during the matching process permits this flexibility.