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	Projects in the scope of the DICOM standard
	Background
	Since 1993, DICOM ("Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine") is the relevant standard in the area of medical image communication. The standard defines techniques for the exchange of digital information between image forming and image processing systems. The general objective of the DICOM standard is to enable a vendor independent exchange of medical images and medical information. On the basis of this intention, DICOM defines data structures for medical images and related data, protocols for the transmission of information between DICOM applications, syntax and semantics of messages for various services (e. g. image transmission, query of an image archive, or print) as well as requirements for DICOM conformant implementations. The beginning of the DICOM standard goes back to the year 1983, when the American College of Radiology (ACR) and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) together formed a working group in order to develop a standard for the vendor independent exchange of images. The first version of the new ACR-NEMA standard was published in 1985, containing a hardware interface for the exchange of information, data structures for image data and related data, as well as a number commands that could be transmitted over a DICOM connection. As a consequence of the moderate success of the new standard, the underlying concepts were fundamentally reengineered from 1988 on. In 1993, the adapted concepts were republished under the new name DICOM, together with several new concepts, e. g. TCP/IP network support. In 1995, DICOM was accepted as a formal standard in Europe under the name MEDICOM ("Medical Image Communication", ENV 12052). After its publication in 1993, the DICOM standard has continuously been corrected and extended by the so-called DICOM committee.
	Project information
	Since March 2002, I am employed on a full-time basis in the DICOM team of the OFFIS computer science institute in Oldenburg. During my occupation, I worked on several DICOM projects, the most important being the open source DICOM toolkit DCMTK and a scan software for mammographies called DicomMammoScan. In addition to software development projects, I act as a lecturer for commercial DICOM training courses that are regularly offered by OFFIS' DICOM team. In the following paragraphs, these individual projects are described concisely. DCMTK is a collection of applications and libraries implementing large parts the DICOM standard. It includes software for examining, constructing and converting DICOM image files, sending and receiving images over a network connection, handling storage media, as well as demonstrative server applications for the image storage service and the worklist management service. DCMTK is written in C/C++, it is publicly available in complete source code and it was used as a central, vendor independent DICOM server at numerous DICOM demonstrations. Around the world, DCMTK is used by many companies and clinics for a great variety of applications, e. g. as a test tool for product tests or as a building block for research projects, prototypes and commercial products. The DCMTK software can be compiled under Windows and a wide range of Unix operating systems including Linux, Solaris, OSF/1, IRIX, Free/Net/OpenBSD and MacOS X. Regarding DCMTK, I was engaged in the development of server applications for the DICOM storage service, the worklist management service and the MPPS service. DicomMammoScan is a scan software for mammography images. The software was developed in the scope of a project with the Bavarian Statutory Health Care Administration (KVB) in 2003. The objective of the software is to scan the different images of a mammography using a high resolution fluoroscopic image scanner and to store the scanned images on the basis of the DICOM standard on a storage medium. The software was developed on a Windows platform with the necessary help of a corresponding ActiveX control, the Microsoft Visual C++ development environment and the Qt class library. Since 2003, OFFIS' DICOM team offers commercial DICOM training courses for organizations, companies, physicians, computer scientists and other interested people. Among other things, these training courses deal with the organization of the DICOM standard, DICOM data structures and information objects, the composition of DICOM images, association negotiation and message exchange in a DICOM network, basic network services, media and media exchange, as well as important aspects of the IHE initiative ("Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise"). In addition to these DICOM projects I participated as a technical manager at the European Connect-a-thons ("Connection Marathon") of the IHE intiative in 2003 and 2004. During these events, vendors of DICOM applications can test their implementations in interaction with the applications of other vendors in one large DICOM network.
	Related websites
	The DICOM standard's homepage, provided by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA). http://medical.nema.org/ David Clunie's homepage concerning the DICOM standard. http://www.dclunie.com/ Website of the DICOM team at the OFFIS computer science institute in Oldenburg. http://dicom.offis.de/ Forum regarding OFFIS' open source C/C++ DICOM toolkit DCMTK. http://forum.dcmtk.org/ Website of the Bavarian Statutory Health Care Administration (KVB). http://www.kvb.de/ Homepage of the "Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise" initiative (IHE). http://www.ihe.net/ Website of the European part of the IHE initiative. http://www.ihe-europe.org/