WG-25: Veterinary Medicine

SecretariatAmerican College of Veterinary Radiology (ACVR)
Matt Wright, DVM
wg25chairs@dicomstandard.org
ChairsDennis Ballance, DVM, Sound-Eklin (a VCA Company)
William Hornof, DVM, MS, Sound-Eklin (a VCA Company)
wg25chairs@dicomstandard.org
Last strategy update2010-11-29
MinutesWG-25 minutes
Email list linkDiscourse email list
Must be on the list to send/receive messages. Please contact the Secretariat to be added.

Scope

To develop DICOM attributes and workflow-related modifications to support identifying and describing veterinary patients, and to develop the nomenclature necessary to support hanging protocols.

Roadmap

  • Define necessary tag/attribute information to allow storage of information in DICOM image headers pertaining to breed, species, neutered state, owner, positioning, body parts, and other unique veterinary patient information as identified by the committee.
  • Coordinated education and demonstration projects for vendors and users are essential to achieve broad adoption of the standard in veterinary medicine. Other activities not yet planned.

Short-Term Objectives

  • Develop diagrams to support positioning and orientation definitions.
  • Work with veterinary IHE implementations as issues arise.

Current Status

  • No CPs under current consideration

Current Work Items

  • None

Long-term Objectives

  • Maintain breed and species code lists.

Challenges and Opportunities

  • DICOM has become a well-accepted standard in veterinary medicine. Most companies in the market must support DICOM or be considered non-viable. A vendor-neutral “showdown” is held annually to assess DICOM file conformance, and CStore capability.
  • Maintaining broad participation and focus is an ongoing challenge.
  • WG 25 recognizes that there could be numerous advantages of using SNOMED CT breed terminology, but the DICOM Standard uses RT terminology. We hope to find an opportunity to incorporate CT concepts into areas of the standard that can benefit from them.

Risks

  • Veterinary DICOM structures could diverge from other Standards (HL7, SNOMED) if careful study of these other Standards is not pursued in conjunction with this process.
  • User lack of understanding could slow development and adoption of Standards.

Relationships to Other Standards

  • HL7 (Section 3.1.1, specifically 3.1.1.35 – 3.1.1.38, and 3.1.2) includes tags related to species, breed, and production use.
  • SNOMED contains classifications of species, breeds, and anatomic structures.
  • ISO in conjunction with HL7 manages organization UIDs