The organization and management of a wide environment of DICOM compliant devices: the DICOM Domain Management Service Class

Despite the increasing use of the DICOM standard, available today both in the research environment and among commercial products, its extensive application in a wide hospital environment still presents several problems concerning the management of the devices and the security of the system. The implementation of the Data and Picture Archiving and Communication System (DPACS) at the Cattinara Hospital of Trieste, showed the need for a centrally-managed service for organizing a large number of devices and for handling a valid security policy. The aim of this study is the development of a DICOM extension, in terms of a new DICOM Service Class, to allow its secure and efficient implementation in a wide environment. The proposed Service Class, called DICOM Domain Management, has been initially developed as a private extension of the standard and is being tested and revised.