PDI Extensions - Detailed Proposal

1. Proposed Workitem: PDI Extensions

• Proposal Editor: David Clunie
• Profile Editor: David Clunie
• Date: 2008-10-01
• Domain: Radiology (Mammo, NM), Cardiology, Radiation Oncology

Summary

PDI uses uncompressed CDs and these are too small for many studies without awkward disk spanning.

DVD and USB media are already supported in DICOM, demonstrated to be interoperable, and reading and writing hardware is ubiquitous. Lossless and lossy compression are also supported by DICOM.

Vendors are already attempting to satisfy the demands of users by producing DICOM but not IHE PDI compliant media using compression and larger media.

2. The Problem

The existing IHE PDI profile supports CDs only, and does not use compression (lossless or lossy) for radiology images. Modern acquisition techniques often produce single data sets that exceed the available PDI CD capacity, and disk spanning (using multiple CDs for one study) makes them difficult (and slow) to view.

The lack of support by IHE of existing standards for contemporary hardware, larger media and effective compression schemes creates a "credibility gap" for PDI.

No PC in recent history has been shipped without both DVD drives and USB connectors.

Increasing attention on image sharing and media interoperability demands that PDI make use of contemporary rather than obsolete technology to satisfy users demands.

4. Standards & Systems

DICOM supports larger (DVD) and faster (USB memory) media already, and provides for both lossless and lossy compression as clinically appropriate. Fears of lack of DVD interoperability have been allayed by successful media readability tests performated at the 2008 IHE NA Connectathon.

5. Technical Approach

PDI can easily be extended to support DVD and USB with minimal changes by adding the relevant DICOM Media Application Profiles to PDI.

<Outline how the standards could be used/refined to solve the problems in the Use Cases. The Technical Committee will be responsible for the full design and may choose to take a different approach, but a sample design is a good indication of feasibility.>

<If a phased approach would make sense indicate some logical phases. This may be because standards are evolving, because the problem is too big to solve at once, or because there are unknowns that won’t be resolved soon.>

Existing actors

<Indicate what existing actors could be used or might be affected by the profile.>

New actors

<List possible new actors>

Existing transactions

<Indicate how existing transactions might be used or might need to be extended.>

New transactions (standards used)

<Describe possible new transactions (indicating what standards would likely be used for each. Transaction diagrams are very helpful here. Feel free to go into as much detail as seems useful.>

Impact on existing integration profiles

<Indicate how existing profiles might need to be modified.>

New integration profiles needed

<Indicate what new profile(s) might need to be created.>

Breakdown of tasks that need to be accomplished

<A list of tasks would be helpful for the technical committee who will have to estimate the effort required to design, review and implement the profile.>

6. Support & Resources

<List groups that have expressed support for the proposal and resources that would be available to accomplish the tasks listed above.>

7. Risks

<List technical or political risks that will need to be considered to successfully field the profile.>

8. Open Issues

<Point out any key issues or design problems. This will be helpful for estimating the amount of work and demonstrates thought has already gone into the candidate profile.>

9. Tech Cmte Evaluation

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Effort Evaluation (as a % of Tech Cmte Bandwidth):

• 35% for ...

Responses to Issues:

See italics in Risk and Open Issue sections

Candidate Editor:

David Clunie