To extend the DICOM Standard to support clinical trials and research using images.

Roadmap

• Continue to evaluate issues related to performing clinical trials and research using images.

Short-Term Objectives

• Improve support for encoding of images and image-like objects for research results
• Improve structured reporting and segmentation support for clinical trials results and measurements.

Current Status

• The work item to define a new IOD and SOP Class to support the encoding of floating point parametric maps has recently been completed and is now final text (Sup 172)
• Various CPs processed directly by WG 6 have improved the encoding of quantitative results for general purposes (including structured reporting and segmentation support for clinical trials results and measurements)

Current Work Items

• No current work item.

Risks

• Other groups will develop “standards” related to the performance of clinical trials that are incompatible with DICOM and hence exclude clinical production systems from use in such trials.

Challenges and Opportunities

• Improve the utility of the DICOM Standard for research and clinical trials.
• Broaden the participating members of the working group among workstation vendors and regulatory agencies.
• Reach out to other industry groups such as research quality assurance firms and software engineering organizations.
• Improve cross-fertilization among our group and other DICOM Working Groups.

Relationships to Other Standards

• A strong informal relationship exists between DICOM participants and other bodies involved in clinical trials and research, such as NCI, ACRIN, QIN and QIBA, as well as specific academic projects such as QIICR.
• Common membership with DICOM WG-06 and WG-30 Small Animal Imaging assures harmonization between these related activities