Study Lifecycle
How a study moves from arrival through triage, reporting, and finalization—and what each stage means for your workflow.
Every study in Xenrad follows the same path: it arrives, gets verified, gets reported, and gets finalized. Here's what happens at each stage and what you need to do.
The four stages
| Stage | What it means |
|---|---|
| New | The study arrived and is on the worklist. Needs triage—usually a demographics check and routing confirmation. |
| Ready | Verified and cleared for reporting. The radiologist can now open and read the study. |
| Reporting | A report is in progress. The study has a draft, and someone is actively writing it. |
| Finalized | The report is complete and locked. Nothing more needs to happen. |
Button labels in the UI may vary slightly between deployments, but these four stages are always the same underneath.
How a study gets into the system
- Imaging is sent from a modality (scanner, gateway, or PACS) to the DICOM ingest point for your organization.
- The platform routes the study to a site based on the called AE title or other routing rules your administrators configured.
- A patient record is resolved or created from the DICOM data and linked to the study.
- The study appears on the worklist as New—staff can now see and process it.
From your perspective: if ingest succeeds, the study shows up on the worklist. That's all you need to know about the ingest side.
What you do at each stage
1. Triage (New)
Open the study from the worklist, review the metadata, and check the patient demographics. If anything is wrong—wrong patient, missing fields—correct it now before it moves to reporting.
When you're satisfied, mark it Ready. This is the handoff to the reading workflow.
2. Review and report (Ready → Reporting)
A radiologist opens the study in Prism and reviews the images. When they start writing the report, the study moves to Reporting and a draft is created.
3. Finalize (Reporting → Finalized)
When the report is complete, the radiologist (or designated reporter) finalizes it. The report becomes read-only and the study moves to Finalized.
Patient editing during the lifecycle
You can edit patient demographics at most stages—from the study page or the patient profile. The exception is when another study for the same patient is already in Ready: the platform locks demographic edits to prevent conflicting changes right before reporting starts.
How external integrations fit in
While DICOM ingest handles images, HL7 and FHIR handle patient and clinical data running alongside it:
- HL7 ADT messages can create or update patient demographics as events happen in your hospital system.
- FHIR lets external systems read or write patient records, observations, and diagnostic reports.
These integrations don't replace the imaging pipeline—they complement it with richer clinical context.
Related
- Worklist — finding and acting on studies.
- Reporting — drafts, sections, finalization.
- Patients and editing — the edit lock and when it applies.