Laurens Ackerman, M.D., Ph.D. Diagnostic Radiology, St. Lukes Rush Presbyterian Hospital, Chicago, Ill
To permit the sharing of data between a heterogeneous set of individuals and computers requires a well designed standard that interacts with the current set of accepted standards, and when implemented achieves consensus of use among users. The solution to the image sharing and transport problem in radiology needs to be solved if PACS (picture archiving and communication systems) are to be part of the modern radiology department and the WADRD (Wide Area Distributed Radiology Department). To this end the ACR/NEMA (American College of Radiology/ National Manufacturers Association) has been working on a standard for almost ten years and until recently had failed to bring the standard forward into successful implementation. In conjunction with ACR/NEMA, the Radiological Society of North America decided to help implement the standard by contracting with Mallenkrodt Institute of Radiology in St. Louis to write necessary software, which has been demonstrated at our meeting of the RSNA for two years. The present ACR/NEMA standard, DICOM 3.0, which resulted from this work, is now probably the accepted standard for radiological image formats and network communication. Now, the user can just ask for a DICOM 3.0 compatible imaging device in the same way as one asks for a TCP/IP connection.
This talk will describe the path from no implementation of the standard to the present day probably success and world wide acceptance along with use in other areas of medicine that include pathology and cardiology.