DICOM (Digital Imaging and

Communications in Medicine)

DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine): The standard for handling, storing, printing, and transmitting information in medical imaging. It includes a file format definition and a network communications protocol. The communication protocol is an application protocol that uses TCP/IP to communicate between systems. DICOM files can be exchanged between two entities that are capable of receiving image and patient data in DICOM format. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) holds the copyright to this standard. It was developed by the DICOM Standards Committee, whose members are also partly members of NEMA.

DICOM enables the integration of scanners, servers, workstations, printers, and network hardware from multiple manufacturers into a picture archiving and communication system (PACS). The different devices come with DICOM conformance statements which clearly state the DICOM classes they support. DICOM has been widely adopted by hospitals and is making inroads in smaller applications like dentists' and doctors' offices.

DICOM differs from other data formats in that it groups information into data sets. That means that a file of a chest X-Ray image, for example, actually contains the patient ID within the file, so that the image can never be separated from this information by mistake.

A DICOM data object consists of a number of attributes, including items such as name, ID, etc., and also one special attribute containing the image pixel data (i.e. logically, the main object has no "header" as such - merely a list of attributes, including the pixel data). A single DICOM object can only contain one attribute containing pixel data. For many modalities, this corresponds to a single image. But note that the attribute may contain multiple "frames", allowing storage of cine loops or other multi-frame data. Another example is NM data, where an NM image by definition is a multi-dimensional multi-frame image. In these cases three- or four-dimensional data can be encapsulated in a single DICOM object. Pixel data can be compressed using a variety of standards, including JPEG, JPEG Lossless, JPEG 2000, and Run-length encoding (RLE). LZW (zip) compression can be used for the whole data set (not just the pixel data) but this is rarely implemented.

MS Technology's DICOM Support:

A trusted name with IBM and it’s customers for the past 8 years, MS Technology provides DICOM applications, such as SureVistaVision. SureVistaVision is PACS compliant which allows you to get the most of our existing PACS System. For more information about our DICOM solutions, please visit our Medical Solutions section or contact us.