©2005 Stefan Starke

DICOM - Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine

©2005 Stefan Starke

A short Definition

History

Facts, Figures, Examples

Future

DICOM – Contents

©2005 Stefan Starke

DICOM – A short Definition

The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine standard (short: DICOM) is THE standard for

exchanging medical images in a digital format.

Currently it consists of 16 different parts, addressing the DICOM protocol, its formats and specifying its

conformance.

©2005 Stefan Starke

DICOM – History

In the early 80‘s, vendors felt comfortable with supporting proprietary communication standards because it locked

their customers to purchasing their products.

To get rid of this unsatisfying situation the American

College of Radiology (ACR) together with the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) developed three standard versions in the years from 1981 till 1993

(ARC-NEMA 1.0 & 2.0; DICOM 3.0).

©2005 Stefan Starke

DICOM – Facts & Figures (1)

No ANSI-Standard

Changing to an ANSI-Standard would bring more restrictions than benefits (see HL7).

Many different approaches for one goal

Developed voluntarily by vendors and users.

Complexity

Language and concepts of the Object-Oriented world of thinking.

©2005 Stefan Starke

DICOM – Facts & Figures (2)

Slow Development

DICOM standard is still only being used for medical imaging -> somewhat of a niche application.

©2005 Stefan Starke

DICOM – DICOM Objects

Smallest Unit of Information

Self contained file, not very different from any other file, f.e. a text-document. (CT, MRI, …)

Consists of the header and the content

The header contains a long stream of textual information, specific to the type of content.

UIDs within the Header

Study, Series, Individual Image, Modality, Date, ...

©2005 Stefan Starke

DICOM – SOP Classes

The entity that initiates use of a service is known as the service class user (SCU), the provider is known as the

service class provider (SCP).

When setting up a DICOM connection, there is a

negotiation process, where it comes clear what capability the decive supports and what not.

These capabilities are clearly specified and identified in the standard as so-called SOP Classes.

©2005 Stefan Starke

DICOM – Pixelmed Java Toolkit

This is a stand-alone DICOM toolkit that implements code for reading and creating DICOM data, DICOM

network and file support, a database of DICOM objects, support for display of directories, images, reports and spectra, and DICOM object validation.

Attribute name = new PersonNameAttribute(TagFromName.PatientName);name.addValue("Homer J. Simpson");

attributes.put(TagFromName.PatientName, name);

Result: 0010,0010,Patient's Name=Homer J. Simpson

©2005 Stefan Starke

DICOM – Patient Identification Attributes

©2005 Stefan Starke

DICOM – ezDICOM

Medical Image Viewer

©2005 Stefan Starke

DICOM – Future

Use DICOM for storing data

Not „only“ sending and printing

“New” Image-Types

Endoscopy, Pathology, other „visible light“ devices

Standard is and will always be up-to-date

The DICOM standard is typically never more than 2 months old.