DICOM is the international standard ensuring interoperability in medical imaging and related workflows. Having access to complete health data is critical as the industry shifts to value-based care. https://www.chetu.com/healthcare/dicom-pacs.php

1. DICOM:
What Is It and Why It
Matters for Your EHR and
Medical Imaging Apps
The universal language of Medical Imaging
Basic Structures and Concepts in DICOM
File Formats Covered Under DICOM
NIFTI
What is DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine)?
An internationally accepted
standard for viewing,
storing, retrieving, and
sharing medical images.
Conforms to set protocols to
maintain accuracy of
information relayed.
Ensures interoperability
amongst imaging systems
and optimizes related
workflows.
All medical images that you
see are likely to be in the
DICOM format.
DICOM Objects or Information Object Definitions
(IOD) is real world data sets with defined
templates.
DICOM Modalityis a property/attribute of the
DICOM data object,e.g. CT,MRI,X-rays etc. are the
modalities.
DICOM applications provide the services required
for the data exchange.
DICOM Message is composed of a Command Set
followed bya conditional Data Set.
Elements consists of a tag,length and value.
DICOM Service Element (DIMSE) are used by
Application Entities (AE).
There are two types of DIMSEServices:Composite
DIMSE-C and Normalized DIMSE-N. These support
operations and notifications like storage,retrieval,
printingetc. on the SOPinstances.
Command and Data is made up of Elements.
Tags are either group or element tags.
AEs have Titles (AET). AEhas an IPaddress
assigned. AETare case sensitive and unique.
WhyShould You Care?
Usinga standard for file format
and communication allows the
pathologydepartment to connects
systems without incompatibility
issues.
Aspecial medical DICOM viewer
needs to be installed in order to
retrieve,view,and access DICOM
medical image files.
DICOM medical imagingdata
cannot be opened byregular
imagingsoftware present on
operatingsystems such as
Windows or Mac OS.
It’d be easier for pathology
images to be stored together
with images f rom other
specialties in the same archive.
Also an extension specific to imagingand allows the
storage of multiple image formats.
XDS-I is an interoperabilityprofile extendingXDSto share
images,diagnostic reports and related information
Not all medical images follow a DICOM format,which has
led to the development of cross-document sharing,or XDS.
The main advantage with DICOM is that it is a standard.
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Integrating with Existing EHR Systems
and Imaging Apps