geographical region, which makes the most of existing resources, and by purchasing compatible new equipment and supplies, helps keep costs down. Radiological images can be captured and communicated to physicians more quickly, allowing them to make a diagnosis and treatment plans more rapidly.
The standard for DICOM was developed by the American College of Radiology (ACR) and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) (RSNA, 2004). The RSNA Electronic Communications Committee began to work with the ACR-NEMA MedPacs group in 1992 to support the implementation of DICOM 3.0. The Electronic Radiology Laboratory (ERL) at the Mallinckrodf Institute of Radiology developed the software. It was the first of its kind to implement the written technical specifications of the DICOM standard. An improved version was available for public access in 1994. The software is designed to run on Unix-based systems.
The IHE has established a Technical Framework which ensures that the services requested by a physician are provided as ordered (Vegoda, 2004). The goal of the IHE Technical Framework is to define the interactions among components of the system. People are assigned roles like actors to make the system work smoothly, e.g. order placer and scheduler/order filler.
IHE has defined seven integration profiles: scheduled workflow, which ensures workflow among the information system; patient information reconciliation, used when the patient is unknown but the procedure must be done immediately; consistent presentation of images, defining a standard contrast curve - the DICOM Grayscale Standard Display Function; presentation of grouped procedures, allowing linking and viewing of different image subsets related to different physician requests; access to radiology information, allowing access to radiology images and related reports; key image note, allowing physicians to attach notes to key images for their own future ...