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DICOM Standards Committee

History

For several years, informal discussions had been had about the relationship of SIIM (formerly SCAR) to the DICOM effort, particularly through the American College of Radiology Committee on DICOM Standards (“ACR Committee”).

Most of these discussions were between members of SIIM and the ACR Committee, but no discussion of joint representation or DICOM membership by SIIM had taken place at the Board level.  There was a great deal of overlap between membership on the ACR Committee and SIIM as would be expected, so SIIM's interests were currently indirectly and informally represented on the DICOM Standards Committee.

With continued work on Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) developments, new examination types (e.g., PET-CT), and the interest of SIIM in Transforming the Radiological Interpretation Process (TRIPTM) efforts, SIIM decided that becoming a member of the DICOM Standards Committee would be a benefit to the organization. 

DICOM is the standards making body behind data formats and transfer protocols for medical imaging.  DICOM has many committees that develop new standards for new imaging modalities as well as information objects to handle the workflow around them.  The standard is constantly evolving while striving to maintain backwards compatibility.  The main standard and the supplements are available online at http://medical.nema.org/dicom/2006.   The majority of members in DICOM are vendors involved in our industry but the voice of the customer is welcomed and encouraged.  SIIM is a voting member on DICOM in ratifying new standards.  DICOM has two large meetings each year and several committee meetings for the different working groups.  One of the main meetings is at the RSNA conference each year and the other moves around.   Dr. Paul Nagy, Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, is the appointed SIIM representative. 

New information objects finalized in the last year of interest:

• Supp 111 Segmentation Storage SOP Class
• Supp 112 Deformable Spatial Registration Storage SOP Class
• Supp 113 Email Transport (enables IHE NAV).

New objects for ballot:

• Supp 114 DICOM Encapsulation of CDA and CDR 
• Supp 116 3D X-Ray.

There are also some truly exciting ones being worked on and are open for comment:

• Supp 121 Modality Procedure Plan and Protocol Storage
• Supp 118 Application Hosting.

As voting members on DICOM, SIIM has the opportunity to create and champion new standards into the DICOM standard.   Almost all of the standards are championed by the vendors themselves as it takes a considerable investment of time to create a new standard.  It is truly impressive the commitment the vendors make toward creating standards and donating them to the commons.