Films and views in a case
A case is the patient. A view is one film inside it, with everything you have measured, planned and placed on that film. A case can hold up to 12 views.
Each view gets its own pane on screen, and each pane carries its own bar along the top: the view’s name, a Left/Right chip, and the tools that act on that film.
Adding a view
How do I add another radiograph to a case?
Add View in the top bar. It opens an empty slot in the film area reading Click or drag to add view, and you can either click it to browse for a file or drag one onto it. The slot also has a PACS / equipment button for pulling a film straight off your imaging — see Getting radiographs in from your equipment.
Two other routes reach the same place:
- Drag a file onto the films — anywhere in the film area, not only the empty slot.
- Paste with Cmd/Ctrl + V — a view copied out of a PACS viewer or an email is on the clipboard, not on disk, and does not have to be saved out first. A pasted screenshot is filed as Pasted image. Paste a web link instead of a picture and the app says so: it cannot fetch a Drive or OneDrive link, because that needs your own login.
On a phone, Add view sits in the ⋯ menu in the header rather than on the header itself.
What file types can I add as a view?
JPG, PNG, DICOM, ZIP, or video — that is what the empty slot says, and the file picker offers the same.
- DICOM is read by the app itself. There is no need to export a JPEG first.
- A ZIP is opened in your browser and the radiographs inside it are imported. Nothing is sent anywhere to be unpacked. A burned-CD folder tree works. Where an archive holds both a DICOM study and loose JPEGs, the DICOM study is used and the app tells you how many other images it set aside.
- A video dropped where films go becomes a view in its own right, tiled beside the films. See Videos on a case below.
Can I add several films at once?
Yes. Select several in the file picker, or drag several across together, and each becomes its own view.
All the files in one import must be the same patient. If the DICOM headers name more than one animal the whole import is refused and nothing is added, so a plan can never be measured across two dogs.
Why can’t I add another view?
Hover Add View and it says which of these it is:
- The case is full. Twelve views is the ceiling. Hidden views still take up their slot, and the tooltip says how many are hidden, so a case that looks half empty can still be full.
- The case is not yours. Only a case’s owner can add views to it. Make your own copy if you need to.
- An empty view is already waiting for an image. Fill it or close it with its × first.
Naming a view
A view arrives named after the file it came from, which is usually whatever the X-ray machine called it.
How do I rename a view?
Click the name on the film’s own bar. It turns into a View name field. Press Enter, or click away, to keep the new name; press Escape to abandon it.
Clear view name — the × inside the field — empties it so you can retype, and leaves the field open. An emptied name is never saved: abandon it and the view keeps the name it had.
Where does the view’s name show?
- On the film’s own bar, on any pane wide enough to hold it. A phone shows numbered tabs in the header instead, and the name is on each tab’s tooltip.
- Over that view’s group in the sidebar’s Items list.
- Under Hidden views in the Add View menu, so you can tell a hidden film from another.
- On the downloaded PNG’s filename, and in the Surgical report.
A good name is worth a minute. “Right tibia — mediolateral” is what tells two similar films apart in the Items list, in the report and in the trash months later.
Hiding a view
How do I hide a view?
Hide this view — the crossed-out eye on the film’s own bar, or in ⋯ More image tools on a narrow pane. It frees the space for the films you are working on.
Hiding does not take anything out of the case:
- The measurements, plans and implants on a hidden view are still there. They stay in the sidebar’s Items list, marked hidden.
- A hidden view is still offered when you build a Surgical report.
- A hidden view still occupies one of the case’s twelve slots.
Hiding is saved with the case, so a view you hid is still hidden next time you open it. It is also undoable.
You cannot hide the last view on screen — the button dims and says The only view left — it cannot be hidden.
How do I get a hidden view back?
Add View. With hidden views in the case the button carries a count badge, and clicking it opens a list headed Hidden views: click one to put it back on screen. Add another image at the foot of the same menu is the way to a new film instead. On a phone the hidden views are rows in the ⋯ menu.
A hidden film is not loaded when the case opens, which is what makes a study with several hidden views quick to open — so expect a short pause the first time you bring one back.
Removing a view
How do I remove a film from a case?
Remove this view from the case — the × on the film’s own bar, or in ⋯ More image tools on a narrow pane. It asks first:
Remove this view? This will remove the image and all objects on this view.
Remove takes the view off the case. Cancel leaves it alone. Only the case’s owner can remove a view; on a colleague’s case the button is dimmed and says so.
What happens to the measurements on a view I remove?
They go with it. The view is removed whole — the radiograph, everything measured or planned on it, and the original it was imported from.
You can undo it straight away, and if you do not, it is still recoverable from the trash for 30 days.
How do I get a view back that I removed?
Trash, in the gallery sidebar. A removed view sits there for 30 days alongside deleted cases, documents and videos, and each row says how many days it has left.
- Restore puts the view back on the case it came off, at the position it held, with its measurements.
- Delete for good destroys it now rather than waiting out the rest of its time. That one cannot be undone.
A view whose whole case has also been deleted has nowhere to go back to. Its row says its case is not in the gallery and Restore is dimmed — restore the case first.
I took the last film out of the case. What now?
An empty case is not a broken one: swapping a poor exposure for a better copy of the same shot passes straight through it, and the empty case still shows the drop zone to land the replacement on.
The app offers a tidy-up rather than taking one — a message reading No images left in this case. with a Delete case button. Nothing happens unless you press it, and the case still holds the patient details, the attachments and the referral links.
Clearing what you have drawn
How do I clear the measurements off one film?
Clear all items on this view — the trash icon on the film’s own bar, labelled Clear items on this view when the bar is folded into a menu. It removes every measurement, plan, annotation and implant on that one view. The image, the calibration and the other views are untouched, and it is undoable.
How do I clear every view at once?
The trash icon beside the Items heading in the sidebar, under the caption All views. It asks first:
Clear every view? This deletes every measurement, plan and implant on all your views. The images themselves stay. You can undo it.
Beside it is a second study-wide button, Re-fit every view — zoom, pan and rotation back to default on every film, which changes nothing you have drawn.
Downloading a film
How do I save a copy of the film?
Download radiograph — the download arrow on the film’s own bar, or in ⋯ More image tools on a narrower pane. You get a PNG at the film’s full resolution, taking in any rotation you have applied, with the lines, osteotomies and implants you have placed drawn onto it, and the millimetres and degrees they read. The editing grips are left off.
The file is named after the view — so “Right tibia — mediolateral” downloads as Right tibia — mediolateral.png. An unnamed view falls back to radiograph_analysis.png. The view itself keeps its name either way.
For a document rather than a picture, use Surgical report in the top bar instead — see Frequently asked questions.
Can I get the original DICOM back?
If the case has banked originals, yes: open Attachments from the top bar and look for the Original radiographs section, then Download beside the film you want. These are the DICOM files exactly as they arrived.
The section is absent when there is nothing to offer. Originals are kept on the paid plans only, they only exist for films that arrived as DICOM, and they are owner-only — a colleague you share the case with sees the film, never the original, because an original carries the full patient header that a share deliberately holds back.
Videos on a case
Can I put a video in a case?
Yes — a gait pass, a seizure, a joint being flexed. Anything worth watching rather than reading.
Drop it where films go and it becomes a view, tiled in the grid beside the films with the same three window controls: Maximise this view, Hide this view and Remove this view from the case. It offers no ruler — a clip is not calibrated or measured on.
You can also add one from Attachments, in the Case videos section, with Add video.
- MP4, MOV or WebM, up to 4 clips per case.
- Every clip is re-encoded to 720p and stored at up to 30 MB. Compressing runs in real time — a sixty-second clip takes about sixty seconds — so keep the window open until it finishes.
- Videos are counted separately from the twelve films.
How do I delete a video?
Remove this view from the case on the clip’s own bar, or the delete button on its row under Case videos. Either way it asks first, and the clip then waits out the same 30 days in the trash as a film or a document, where you can put it back.
Documents on a case
Referral reports, bloodwork and letters go in Attachments (the paperclip in the top bar), under Case Documents. PDF, Word, JPG and PNG are accepted, up to 10 MB each, and they ride the same 30-day trash as everything else.
An attachment is reference only — you cannot measure or plan on one. A radiograph you intend to plan on has to come in through Add View, not through the paperclip. This is the one thing worth getting right first time: a film filed as an attachment looks safely stored and then cannot be measured, and nothing on screen explains why.
Working with several films at once
How are the films laid out?
They tile automatically, and wrap onto more rows as the case fills up: up to four columns on a desktop, three on a tablet. A phone mounts one film at a time and switches between them with the numbered tabs in the header.
Which film do the tools act on?
The one with the cyan outline. Click anywhere on a pane to make it the current one; the sidebar, the calibration panel and the keyboard all follow it.
Two things worth knowing about this:
- Calibration is per film. Two views of the same patient can be scaled differently, so the millimetres in the sidebar are the current film’s.
- The Items list is not. It shows every view in the case, grouped by view name, rather than only the current one — so a measurement you placed on another film does not vanish when you click away from it.
Can I make one film bigger?
Maximise this view, on the film’s bar, fills the whole film area with it. The same button then reads Restore all views and puts the others back. The button only appears where there is more than one pane to choose between.
Can I change the order of the films?
Yes — drag a film by its own bar and drop it where you want it. The other panes shrink to open up the gaps, and a cyan marker shows which edge it will land on. The order is the one you read the films in, and it is kept with the case.
The image tools on each film’s bar
Brightness and contrast, mirroring, flipping, rotating, inverting and Reset view are all on the same film bar, and each acts on that one view only. They are answered in Frequently asked questions under Viewing the film.
On a narrow pane those tools fold into ⋯ More image tools rather than disappearing — if a button you expect is not on the bar, open that menu.