If you are using DCM4CHE as the 'master' image archive and the study has already been stored then the safest approach is to make your edits using the DCM4CHEE web interface.
If you resend an edited study to DCM4CHEE then it will keep a copy of the file if the StoreSCP 'StoreDuplicatesIfDifferentMD5' attributes is set, but existing (db entry) study level attributes will not get modified.

You can change the default behavior, that only attributes on instance/object level are overwritten, but attributes on patient/study/series level are only supplemented by new received objects of an existing patient/study/series by specifying an explicit value for attribute "update-strategy" of the "patient"/"study"/"series" element in conf/dcm4chee-attribute-filter.xml (s.a. conf/dcm4chee-attribute-filter.dtd)

But I don't think it's a good idea to update patient/study/series attributes on receive of additional objects of that patient/study/series !

thanks for your information gunter.

I am afraid I still need some more reading to digest what you mean as I am very new to how a PACS operate. If I understand correctly, that means I could modify the "update-strategy" such that the, repeated, updated, "series", when sent over again from my KPACS Client, will overwrite the original stored attributes in dcm4chee server, right?

when you mention it is not a good idea, is it from a technical point of view, or is it because of some other reasons such as the possibility of letting users to mess up with the studies? We are actually using it in a research environment so I was thinking that having the capability of modifying some attributes, esp "Study Description" would be very useful.

Edited by: abelau on Oct 30, 2008 2:36 PM

Having a little bit more reading on the use of dcm4chee-attribute-filter.xml, I tried to make a change as follows:

I made the follow change in an attempt to allow K-PACS users to update the attribute "Study Description" when the retrieve the study, modify the header, and store it back to dcm4chee

<study>
<attr tag="00080005"/> <!-- Specific Character Set -->
<attr tag="00080020"/> <!-- Study Date -->
<attr tag="00080030"/> <!-- Study Time -->
<attr tag="00080050"/> <!-- Accession Number -->
<attr tag="00080090"/> <!-- Referring Physician Name -->
<attr tag="00081030"/> <!-- Study Description -->
<attr tag="00081032"/> <!-- Procedure Code Seq -->
<attr tag="0020000D" coerce="false"/> <!-- Study Instance UID -->
<attr tag="00200010"/> <!-- Study ID -->
<attr tag="0032000A"/> <!-- Study Status ID -->
</study>
TO
<study>
<attr tag="00080005"/> <!-- Specific Character Set -->
<attr tag="00080020"/> <!-- Study Date -->
<attr tag="00080030"/> <!-- Study Time -->
<attr tag="00080050"/> <!-- Accession Number -->
<attr tag="00080090"/> <!-- Referring Physician Name -->
<attr tag="00081030" overwrite="true"/> <!-- Study Description -->
<attr tag="00081032"/> <!-- Procedure Code Seq -->
<attr tag="0020000D" coerce="false"/> <!-- Study Instance UID -->
<attr tag="00200010"/> <!-- Study ID -->
<attr tag="0032000A"/> <!-- Study Status ID -->
</study>

According to http://www.dcm4che.org/jira/browse/DCMEE-253 , "overwrite" means the new object will replace the attribute in the DB. However, I resend the same study with a modified "Study Description" in the DICOM header, but did not observe any change in the update behavior unfortunately, even after restarting dcm4chee. Is there anything I am missing?

Edited by: abelau on Oct 31, 2008 6:03 AM

yep that's exactly what I need... gunter, thanks for explaining. Actually upon searching the term "update-strategy", I've found similar threads also.