What is DICOM?

The Digital Imaging and Communications in medicine (DICOM) standard was created by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) to aid the distribution and viewing of medical images such as CT scans, MRIs, and ultrasound. Most people refer to image files which are compliant with Part 10 of the DICOM standard as DICOM format files.

A single DICOM file contains both a header (which stores information about the patient's name, the type of scan, image dimensions, etc), as well as all of the image data (which can contain information in three dimensions). Files can be compressed using lossy or lossless variants of the JPEG format, as well as a lossless Run-Length Encoding format (which is identical to the packed-bits compression found in some TIFF format images).

 

In computing, a grayscale digital image is an image in which the value of each pixel is a single sample. Displayed images of this sort are typically composed of shades of grey, varying from black at the weakest intensity to white at the strongest, the maximum number of shades is 4096. However the greyscale images intended for visual display are typically stored with 8 bits per sampled pixel, which allows 256 intensities (i.e., shades of gray) to be recorded, typically on a non-linear scale.  This is as much as the eye can read and most computer monitors are set to read just 256.  A Dicom image allows over 4000 greyscales which means you can manipulate the image to much greater degree than a conventional stored digital file with just 256 greyscales.

 

Typically this is mapped as shown above.

 

 

 

What is PACS?

 

PACS stands for Picture Archiving and Communications System, a package of software whereby  images are stored and transmitted between modalities and computers. PACS has allowed the X-Ray to join the digital age whereby the image can be reviewed utilising one of several screen formats (1 to 16 images per page). Images may be edited, manipulated (window level, zoom, pan) and exported. 3D volume-rendering.

 

Here is a pictorial summary of how the RxWorks Dicom Platform links to your RxWorks (or existing) network.

 

 

The RxWorks Dicom Platform

Why RxWorks Dicom