What is DICOM?

Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) is a standard for handling, storing, printing, and transmitting information in medical imaging. It includes a file format definition and a network communications protocol. DICOM files can be exchanged between two entities with the capacity of receiving images and data of patients in DICOM format. The communication protocol is an application protocol that uses TCP/IP to communicate between systems (Source: Wikipedia).

File format

DICOM files have a header with standardized and free fields as well as a body with the image itself. DICOM tags, located in the header of the DICOM file, permit to place the image in context with correct patient identification data.

DICOM services

As communication standard, DICOM defines a wide set of services, most of which imply the transmission of data over the net.

• DICOM Store
• DICOM Storage commitment
• DICOM Query/Retrieve
• DICOM Worklist
• DICOM Print
• Modality performed procedure step

DICOM and medical image integration

Theoretically, the DICOM standard permits to solve the majority of problems that arise when dealing with the integration of medical image devices and systems. However, most DICOM device manufacturers do not implement a large number of services foreseen in the standard. For example, a device may perform a DICOM Print but might not be able to carry out other actions such as recovering certain images (DICOM Query & Retrieve) or a list of the patients appointed for that day and device (DICOM Worklist), which makes very difficult the integration of devices and systems in a transparent way for the user.

In fact, one of the main missions of C2C is to develop and market the required tools (MIO™ and MEDTING) to provide solutions for these problems.