title: Image formats: five years after the AAPM standard for digital image interchange.
abstract: The publication of AAPM Report No. 10 was the first attempt to standardize image formats in the medical imaging community. Since then, three other groups have formed (CART--the Scandinavian collaboration for Computer Assisted Radiation Therapy treatment planning; ACR-NEMA, a collaboration whose purpose is to formulate a standard digital interface to medical imaging equipment; and COST B2 Nuclear Medicine Project a European collaboration whose purpose is to define a format for digital image exchange in Nuclear Medicine). The AAPM format uses key-value pairs in plain text to keep track of all information associated with a particular image. The radiation oncology community in the U.S. has been defining key-value pairs for use with CT, nuclear medicine and magnetic resonance (MR) images. The COST B2 Nuclear Medicine Project has also adopted this format and together with the Australian/New Zealand Society of Nuclear Medicine Technical Standards Sub-Committee which has also adopted this format, has defined an initial set of key-value pairs for Nuclear Medicine images. Additionally, both ACR-NEMA and CART have been defining fields for use with the same types of images. The CART collaboration has introduced a database which is available electronically, but is maintained by a group of individuals. ACR-NEMA operates through committee meetings. The COST B2 Nuclear Medicine Project operates through electronic (and postal where necessary) mail. To insure a consistent set of field names in such a rapidly developing arena requires the use of a server rather than a committee. Via a server a person would inquire if a particular field had been defined. If so, the defined name would be returned.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027.
authors.forename: G Q
authors.initials: GQ
authors.lastname: Maguire
authors.forename: M E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Noz
mesh_terms: D006283:Health Physics; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000592:standards*; D007256:Information Systems; D011880:Radiotherapy Planning, Computer-Assisted; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted