Incompatibility of Compatible

Abstract

Remember the question of “DICOM 2003 support” from Chap. 4? Another question, which I have heard even more frequently, is “Does your software support Siemens (GE, Agfa, Philips, and so on) DICOM?” First of all, there is nothing but DICOM 3.0, which any manufacturer is supposed to support. Manufacturers are only allowed to add their private attributes for something they do not find in the standard DICOM Data Dictionary. However, this question brings us back to the main challenge of DICOM: making digital medicine provider-independent. Has this goal been achieved? Practically speaking, about 90% has been realized. After nearly 10 years of solving the provider compatibility issues, I can attest to our greatest relief that DICOM 3.0 can indeed be used as a common denominator, and any two DICOM 3.0 devices can be practically integrated into a functional clinical network. Sometimes it comes seamlessly, but sometimes interfacing DICOM units from different manufacturers can turn into a headache for you and into a very revealing experience for your DICOM providers. Let’s take a simple scenario and see what could go wrong. Let’s say that you have purchased an MRI unit from company X, and a DICOM server from company Y. All you want to do is to store images from your X MRI on the Y server. Chances are, you can connect the two units as prescribed and everything will start working just as expected. But what if it doesn’t?