Interoperability for image and non-image data in the DICOM standard investigated from different vendor implementations

DICOM conformity alone does not guarantee the interoperability of imaging equipment developed by different parties. In a survey the DICOM datasets of 19 complete angiographic examinations have been compared. It was found, that most datasets are DICOM compliant and image data are encoded in a similar way. On the other hand the interoperability of non-image data has been found to be very limited. Especially data concerning patient demographics, time synchronization, contrast agent and acquisition information are missing or encoded in different ways. Reasons were misinterpretations by manufacturers and ambiguous definitions in the DICOM standard. Furthermore it was realized, that incorrect encoding could often not be found by automatic validation tools: In contrast manual examination and expert knowledge is necessary to understand problems in interoperability.