ITK/Release 4/DICOM/Minutes 2010 10 11

Attendees

• Mathieu Malaterre (CoSMo)
• Mark Roden (CoSMo)
• Dan Blezek + Bill Ryan (Mayo)

Topics

• DICOM Query/Retrieve API (C-ECHO, C-STORE, C-MOVE, C-FIND):
  • C-ECHO, C-STORE, C-FIND all agree
  • C-GET is not always implemented
  • C-MOVE is always to be found (Mayo exp).

• Should we support streaming (in memory, to disk ) ?
  • Support for direct in memory import *should* be possible.
  • Support for writing to disk is required !
    1. When OverlayData is stored in unused Pixel Data
    2. When storing something that is not an image (RTSTRUCT...)
    3. When storing something that is not handled by the implementation (eg. C-MOVE sending J2K to a dcmtk implementation)
    4. Low level DICOM protocol does not easily allow streaming. In which case we always need to retrieve the whole DataSet (eg. Large MultiFrame image in Enhanced CT/MR).

• C-FIND interface ?
  • low level DICOM approach: http://www.itk.org/Wiki/DICOM_QueryRetrieve_Explained will be too complex for ITK users
    • Will provide a simple structure that limit user to legal element only. documentation for wild char, and date range query.
    • Patient Name query will be case insensitive when possible.
  • interface for characterset:
    • DICOM Support almost all possible character set (PS 3.3 - 2009, C.12.1.1.2 Specific Character Set Specific Character). Ref: ftp://medical.nema.org/medical/dicom/2009/09_03pu3.pdf
    • Will provide an ASCII (char*). Question: UTF-8 implicit ?
    • Will provide a wchar interface (different function names)

• Implementation details:
  • Support GDCM + DCMTK
  • CTN is difficult to use (Mayo exp).
  • Interface should be flexible to allow Third party implementation (Merge Toolkit).

• Extensions : kerberos or TLS will not be supported in the short term.

SubTopics

• Relation: itk::Image / itk::DICOMDataSet
  • itk::Filter should only update Group 0028. Any other operation should be done at application level. ITK pipeline will not be responsible to update the DICOM DataSet.