Conventional Migration.

The vendor installs a migration appliance (a computer with special software installed) that connects to the DICOM interfaces of the source and destination PACS, and transfers the data. The migration appliance takes an inventory of the source PACS using DICOM C-FIND queries, and directs the transfer of data until it is complete. The Migration Appliance may have the ability to update the format of old DICOM objects thus retrieved, but can only access information in the source PACS that is presented on the source PACS’ DICOM interface. Information such as saved window/level settings is often lost. The more sophisticated of conventional migration appliances may reconcile retrieved data against demographic or order information separately obtained from the Radiology Information System.
Conventional Migration is slow: It typically requires 20-30% of the time it took to acquire the data. For a five-year-old PACS, conventional migration can take a year to 18 months. “Smart” migration appliances can intelligently optimize the order of migration, but the old system must still be kept operational during the entire migration period.