Inference of appropriate anatomical region from inconsistent descriptions in order to provide fast and accurate prefetching is provided. In various embodiments, a first plurality of user-configurable rules is read from a data store. Each rule maps to a user-configurable anatomical region. A plurality of studies is accessed from the image archive. Each of the plurality of studies has associated metadata. The plurality of rules is applied to the metadata associated with the plurality of studies to determine an anatomical region of each of the plurality of studies. Based on the anatomical regions of the plurality of studies and one or more additional rule, a subset of the plurality of studies is selected for display to a user on a display.