WE-B-352-01: Current DICOM Topics: 3D Objects and Compression

Abstract

The development of the DICOM Standard is accomplished through Working Groups of the DICOM Standards Committee. The Working Groups perform the majority of work on the extension of and corrections to the DICOM Standard. The ACR Committee on DICOM Standards, under the Commission on Medical Physics, has been established to provide a summary of the current activities and future directions of the DICOM Standards Committee. In this presentation two recently active areas are reviewed with an emphasis on how the emerging new standards impact diagnostic radiology. 1. The new Surface Segmentation Storage SOP Class Supplements.This Supplement, developed by a joint effort of Working Group 17 (3D) and Working Group 24 (Surgery), addresses the generic structure of 3D segmentation results. The standard provides a method to store segmented surface information in a manner that permits rendering of shaded models using common computer graphic approaches. Industry support for the SOP class will change the manner is which analyzed cross sectional data is stored for review by radiologists, oncologists, surgeons, etc. In addition the enhancement of the Presentation State for these new 3D objects is being initiated by working Group 11 (Display Function Standard) and Working Group 24 (Surgery) has initiated work on a Supplement to improve surgical plans for implants using these new 3D objects. 2. Compression: JPEG 2000 and MPEG2 Transfer syntaxes. JPEG 2000 compression was added as transfer syntax by Working Group 4 (Compression) in 2001 but has had only modest impact on image quality relative to the previous baseline JPEG methods. Of more significance is the extension in 2004 to JPEG 2000 part 2 multi‐component transfer syntaxes which apply to multi‐spectral and 3D image data. The extension of the standard to permit the pixel data module to reference a JPIP URL to access image data from a web server (supplement 1006, 2004) is particularly notable in light of the increasing use of web clients in enterprise PACS systems. Working Group 13 (Visible Light) introduced a transfer syntax in 2004 for MPEG2 (Supplement 42) to send visible light objects in standard resolution similar to video DVD. This is now being extended to support high spatial resolution objects similar to Blu‐ray DVD. Educational Objectives: 1. Understand from two examples how the DICOM standard is continuously extended to address new requirements. 2. Learn how a new SOP storage class might impact the storage and display of analyzedimage data. 3. Learn how new DICOM transfer syntaxes on compression impact diagnostic radiology.