Imagery and textual communications among healthcare information systems, medical imaging equipment, and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) have always been difficult as each of these components varies with platforms, modalities, and manufacturers. With the emerging of industry standards, it become feasible to integrate all these heterogeneous, disparate medical images and textual data. This paper describes two such major industry standards: Health Level 7 (HL7) and ACR/NEMA. In conforming to the HL7 standard, we are able to share medical information between the hospital information systems, radiology information systems, and PACS. By adapting the ACR/NEMA 2.0 standard, we also can convert medical images generated from a variety of modalities and manufacturers to its standardized data format. The conversion is based on the data dictionary defined in the ACR/NEMA 2.0 document.

Date Published: 15 May 1994
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 2165, Medical Imaging 1994: PACS: Design and Evaluation, (15 May 1994); doi: 10.1117/12.174326

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2165:
Medical Imaging 1994: PACS: Design and Evaluation
R. Gilbert Jost M.D., Editor(s)