Imaging the medical business: DICOM

The efficiency in every sphere of life due to the technological and scientific advancements includes the health sector also. With the technological and scientific progress the people are becoming more aware of their health and nutrition. And due to this growing importance on health, the medical sector is also experiencing a huge growth. This growth in the medical sector is accompanied by the technological improvements as in the cases of other sectors. Almost all the hospitals and clinics are using technological advancements in their practices. Be it the medical software for billing or the EMR software system they are using. It is estimated that the use of an appropriate medical software product in place has the potential to increase the earnings by a considerable amount of more than or equal to 30%. So, simply you cannot neglect the importance that a right medical software product bears in medical industry.

And in this age of advancement any medical business unit without the imaging division is just incomplete. Imaging in medical business is of a great importance that nobody can ignore and even alter. The image reports like cardiographs, biomagnetic imaging, computer radiography, tomography, diaphanographs, microscopy, endoscopy, mammography, spectroscopy, radio fluoroscopy, thermographs, ultra sound, x-ray angiography are a few of the imaging services to name that comes into the scene when we talk about medical imaging reports. Today’s treatment of a patient is incomplete if no one of these images accompanies his records. And with these imaging services there is a common standard for the handling, storage, printing and transmission of imaged information in medical imaging. This common standard or the common format for the images is known as DICOM.

DICOM is the abbreviation for Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine. The Picture Archiving and Communication System or simply PACS which is a system, uses this standard for the all the medical imaging. DICOM includes a file format definition and a network communication protocol. And this network communication protocol uses TCP/IP for communication in between the systems. DICOM enables the integration of scanners, printers, workstations, computer systems and other network hardware into PACS. DICOM supportive devices come with the capacity to support different DICOM classes separately. DICOM is developed by American College of Radiology (ACR) and National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA). The present DICOM is the third version of this standard. The first version was released in the year 1985. It was ACR/NEMA 300. The second version came in the year 1988 by the name ACR/NEMA V2.0.

DICOM bears some very necessary information along with the images like the patient ID, which is inseparable from this information even by mistake. While handling DICOM data different medical software products are used. Software tools for the transfer, organizing of DICOM data, for image supports etc. are very widely used. Trial Wire is a very useful medical software used in DICOM data transfer, de-identify and handling. There are other software products like GDCM, OsiriX, ImageVis3D, VRRender, ImageJ, MicroDicom, Medstrat, kPacs, UniPACS etc. which are very commonly used in DICOM interpretation.

Trial Wire is a medical software product used to transfer DICOM image from one to another web enabled computer.  It is a java based tool available free of cost. The use of a medical software product like Trial Wire reduces the cost associated with the couriers used to transfer DICOM data from one location to the other. Trial Wire also provides an audit trail for any changes made to the DICOM data in order to comply with the HIPAA regulations.