Cross Community Access for Imaging (XCA-I) - Detailed Proposal

1. Proposed Profile: Cross Community Access for Imaging (XCA-I)

• Proposal Editor:

Chris Lindop, christopher.lindop@ge.com

Claudio Saccavini, University of Padova, csaccavini@rad.unipd.it

• Date: 9 October 2008
• Version: 1.1
• Domain: Radiology
• Reference Input - [IHE Profile Proposal XCA-I.doc]

2. The Problem

The Cross Community Information Exchange is very powerful to federate different XDS Affinity Domains and the XCA profile is a solution for the Document exchange. But if we need to share also DICOM images we need an extension of this profile such as XDS-I is for XDS.

3. Key Use Case

The HeathOptimum Project (www.healthoptimum.info) will implement in the beginning of 2009 a federation of seven different affinity domain. Every domain shares for telemedicine purposes documents and radiological images. This is the community domain scenario:

4. Standards & Systems

• IHE Integration Profile XCA
• DICOM Workitem for Webservices
• IHE Integration Profile XDS-I
• IHE Integration Profile XDS.b

5. Discussion

For XDS-I deployments, it is crucial to share images in a federation of Affinity Domains. The Italian Government, as an example, has decided to realize a national infrastructure not based on a single affinity domain, but on federation of Community Domains. Canada also has the same need with the integration of the regional imaging Repositories. The urgency for a solution in the USA is in discussion.

Summary

The XCA profile does handle the linking of multiple affinity domains effectively. It does not address the federation of image document sources. The current DICOM mechanisms are not sufficient to handle the cross community access. A typical issue is with regards to AE title. It is not unique. Current propsals have focused on gateway technology to solve this issue or regionally managed inage repositories. This is an onging work in DICOM with webservices that hold the promise of solving this important issue. But this will hold off an IHE solution for at least a year or possibly 2.

5. Technical Approach

The current methodology is the use of gateways. But the future methodology will need to look at a more robust model using web services. This is ongoing work in DICOM.

Existing actors

TBD

New actors

TBD

Existing transactions

TBD

New transactions (standards used)

TBD

Impact on existing integration profiles

TBD

New integration profiles needed

See technical Approach summary above.

Breakdown of tasks that need to be accomplished

1. Form a working group with the current XDS-I implimentators and vendors.
2. Perform an analysis of the existing and proposed methods utilized by vendors today for performing cross community access of images.
3. Develop a consensus on the approach with the vendors to perform XCA-I.
4. Create a white paper outlining the approach with reccomendations for a profile and as input to the DICOM web services workitem.

6. Support & Resources

XDS-I implementors and vendors world-wide.

7. Risks

Major technicla risk is that there are no webservices defined for DICOM today.

Major polital risk is that this work is under consideration world-wide for deployment.

8. Open Issues

Standards do not exist for a DICOM webservices model. This workitem is under development by DICOM. This would be a major impact to this profile development.

9. Tech Cmte Evaluation

<The technical committee will use this area to record details of the effort estimation, etc.>

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

• 35% for ...

Responses to Issues:

See italics in Risk and Open Issue sections

Candidate Editor:

Chris Lindop, christopher.lindop@ge.com

Claudio Saccavini, University of Padova, csaccavini@rad.unipd.it

Radiology_Proposals_2008-2009