DICOM Capacitor for Mobile & Remote Imaging

The Mobile Van Problem

Mobile imaging coaches operate where network connectivity is intermittent, unreliable, or entirely unavailable for stretches of the day:

• Cellular signals drop mid-transfer
• VPN tunnels time out
• LTE throughput fluctuates wildly between stops

Without an intermediary, these conditions lead to failed sends at the modality, partial studies in PACS, duplicated exams, and frustrated technologists managing retransmissions instead of patients.

DICOM Capacitor eliminates all of these problems.

Typical Mobile Van Setup

The modality talks only to Capacitor. Capacitor worries about connectivity, retries, integrity, and delivery.

How It Works

Study Acquisition

• Modality sends the study to Capacitor via standard DICOM C-STORE
• Capacitor is on the local network, so transfer completes at LAN speed — effectively instant
• No waiting, no failed sends on the modality console, no technologist intervention required

Local Caching and Validation

Once received, Capacitor:

• Writes the study to local encrypted storage
• Validates SOP completeness, image count, and DICOM header integrity
• Queues the study for delivery

At this point the study is safe, even if the van loses signal entirely.

Connectivity-Aware Transmission

When a network path becomes available, Capacitor begins transmitting queued studies to PACS asynchronously:

• Automatic retries on failure
• Bandwidth throttling to avoid saturating the link
• Resume-on-failure — picks up exactly where it left off
• No corruption, no duplicates, no human involvement required

Interrupted Transfer Resume

Transmission batch size is fully configurable:

• By count — a specific number of images at a time
• By size — a defined amount in megabytes or gigabytes
• By study — entire studies as a unit
• Single or multiple associations — Capacitor manages both

If the connection drops, Capacitor tracks exactly which images were successfully acknowledged and resumes by sending only the balance of undelivered images. Nothing is resent unnecessarily, and nothing is lost.

Guaranteed Delivery

A study is marked complete only when:

• PACS sends a successful DICOM acknowledgment
• All SOP instances are confirmed delivered

Until then, the study remains queued and retries continue automatically. This is why hospitals trust Capacitor for regulatory-critical workflows like mammography.

Worklist Caching

In mobile environments, the modality needs access to a worklist to pull scheduled orders — but the worklist server is back at the facility, on the other side of an unreliable link. Capacitor solves this by acting as a local worklist proxy.

Zero-Configuration Destination Management

In many mobile programs, a single coach travels between multiple facilities. Each facility has its own PACS, and images from one site must never be delivered to another.

Capacitor supports a zero-configuration mode:

• Modality sends to one destination — the local Capacitor
• Capacitor manages all downstream routing automatically
• Uses geolocation, network detection via IP address, and node detection to determine the current facility
• Switches destinations automatically when the coach moves
• Optionally isolates the cache so studies from the previous stop don't straggle to the new location
• Each facility receives exactly and only the images that belong to it

Scheduled and Trigger-Based Delivery

Not every mobile program wants images transmitted over cellular the moment they are acquired. Capacitor supports multiple delivery triggers while preserving the fire-and-forget experience for technologists:

Both modes can be combined. Studies are still validated, queued, and deduplicated regardless of when delivery occurs. The technologist's workflow is always the same: acquire the exam, send to Capacitor, move on.

Adaptive Network Intelligence

Capacitor continuously monitors network conditions and self-tunes for best-effort delivery:

• Detects current transmission speed in real time
• Reconfigures timeout values and retry intervals on the fly
• Widens tolerances on slow, intermittent connections to maximize delivery within each connectivity window
• Tightens parameters when throughput improves to move studies faster
• Learns from its own success and failure rates — no manual tuning required

This adaptive behavior extends to time-to-live values for queued images. Network conditions can change from stop to stop — Capacitor adjusts automatically.

Mammography-Specific Advantages

Capacitor is especially critical for mammography mobile vans, where regulatory and clinical requirements demand absolute data integrity:

• Preserves StudyInstanceUID consistency across all transfers
• Ensures CAD, SR, and PR objects remain properly linked to their parent studies
• Prevents ghost or split studies in PACS
• Maintains MQSA audit trail integrity throughout the store-and-forward process

This matters for workflows involving iCAD, Transpara, Volpara, GE PACS, and other mammography-specific systems.