SCAR Presentation

Just wanted to drop a ping here about a presentation that I made in Austin, TX last week that included a pitch to RAILS…

The SCAR (The Society for Computer Applications in Radiology) conference is based on Medical Imaging and I was invited to speak/chair a Special Session entitled “Open Source PACS Tools.” I presented on the use of Ethereal to inspect the DICOM protocol, Nagios to monitor a PACS, and also Ruby on Rails to quickly solve problems by quickly building web applications.

To make a long story longer, I wanted to promote the use of Rails to solve common tasks in Radiology workflow.

I used the “Shock and Awe” approach and developed an application via screencast that took about 45 seconds to complete. Though the audience was subdued, I ended up answering many questions individually and found a couple of closet Rails users…

To compliment the talk, I also developed a VERY simple Content Management Database coined PACStrak. The application stores various support information about devices in the Medical Imaging industry.

The session reference is here: http://www.scarnet.net/2006special.html#ses4

The presentation is here: http://www.clubpacswestmi.net/SCARSpecialSession4.pdf

The swf projector is here: http://www.clubpacswestmi.net/scaronrails.exe