Steven C. Horii, MD

DICOM is, of necessity, a complex standard. To make matters more difficult for those encountering it for the first time, it is written in the dry language required of standards and with a minimum of explanatory (called "informative" in the DICOM documents) information. Nonetheless, the standard has proved to be practical. The main purpose of this introductory article has been to demystify DICOM to some extent. The author begs forgiveness from those who are DICOM experts for what must surely seem to be oversimplifications and a glossing over of detail. However, the author certainly does not intend for any reader to go out and implement DICOM armed only with the knowledge contained in this article; such an undertaking requires an understanding of DICOM achieved only through a thorough study of the source documents.

For the reader whose interest or curiosity may have been piqued by this article, the author recommends some of the excellent resources available on the World Wide Web. The following are good starting points: http://www.nema.org/ (NEMA's home page), http://www.xray.hmc.psu.edu/ (Penn State University at Hershey), http://dumccss.mc.duke.edu/standards/ (Duke University), and http://www.merge.com/DICOM/ (a commercial vendor but with many links to DICOM resources).

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