DICOM, le standard pour l’imagerie médicale

Medical Imaging is now about to be full digital. Since the beginning of digitalization, the data exchange evolves continuously between equipments from different manufacturers. The need for a standard appeared at the beginning of the eighties and lead to DICOM, the worldwide standard for Medical Imaging which was created at the beginning of the nineties. DICOM may seem too complex; however this is due to the Medical Imaging specificities and to the multiple modalities. Although Medical Imaging professionals do not need to have a full knowledge of DICOM, when buying the equipment some knowledge about it is required for an adequate selection. This paper aims to describe DICOM basis to allow the physician to understand the DICOM conformance statements. Such statements shall be published and made available for users by manufacturers. The conformance statements describes which parts of the standard are implemented and in which way. This paper will also set Digital Medical Imaging in the Healthcare Information System.