Technical Developments in Radiology: Enhancing Research Workflows with PACScrawler.

Cohort studyJournal of imaging informatics in medicine· Jul 2026

Technical Developments in Radiology: Enhancing Research Workflows with PACScrawler.

Joshy Cyriac, Ashraya Kumar Indrakanti, Jakob Wasserthal … Martin Segeroth

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RadiologyCohort studyQ1IF 5.3

PACScrawler retrieves imaging studies more quickly than manual methods.

Technical Developments in Radiology: Enhancing Research Workflows with PACScrawler.

Joshy Cyriac … Martin Segeroth

Journal of imaging informatics in medicine · Jul 2026 · Q1 in Radiology

Background

Efficiently identifying and retrieving imaging studies to create research cohorts is often hindered by the segregated storage of medical imaging data and radiological reports.

Methods

To address this, we developed PACScrawler, an open-source tool designed to streamline cohort assembly by enabling efficient search and access to imaging studies across Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (Picture Archiving and Communication Systems) and Radiology Information Systems (Radiology Information Systems).

n = 316,310 patients

Results

16

min 08 s

PACScrawler was faster at getting medical images than manual methods

n = 316,310 patients

More results

Between 2012 and 2024, PACScrawler indexed 2,327,317 examinations from 316,310 patients at our institution.

In our local setup, routine indexing of 1079 examinations on a representative day required 26.5 min, corresponding to a median of 1.4 s per study.

More results

For LLM-assisted query construction, 17 of 20 generated Solr queries were usable with no or limited manual adjustment.

As an illustrative use case, the index enabled longitudinal monitoring of local imaging volumes and examination complexity.

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Conclusion

As a DICOM-based tool, PACScrawler may be adapted to other clinical environments after local Picture Archiving and Communication Systems/Radiology Information Systems integration and validation; source code is available at https://github.com/pacs-ris-crawler/pacs-ris-crawler .

Technical Developments in Radiology: Enhancing Research Workflows with PACScrawler.

Technical Developments in Radiology: Enhancing Research Workflows with PACScrawler.

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