Session P7D.2

Innovation and Advantage of the DICOM ECG Standard for Viewing, Interchange and Permanent Archiving of the Diagnostic Electrocardiogram

T Hilbel*, BD Brown, J De Bie

University of Heidelberg
Heidelberg, Germany

The DICOM standard is a set of rules that allows medical images to be exchanged between image acquisition systems, image archival systems, and image workstations within hospitals. The widely used DICOM standard also includes rules for diagnostic ECG waveforms, but for a long time, no ECG manufacturer has marketed electrocardiographs that support the DICOM waveform standard. It was spring 2006 before the first ECG manufacturer announced its adoption of the DICOM standard for diagnostic electrocardiographs. The new electrocardiograph has a DICOM compatible network interface that can connect to DICOM network servers.
Methods: A simple DICOM ECG software viewer will be demonstrated to display the recorded ECG waveforms. The DICOM Validation Toolkit (DVTk) software utility is used to demonstrate the DICOM ECG waveform file structure.
Results: Any stored DICOM ECG can be shared and retrieved from hospital DICOM servers. The diagnostic ECG tracing can be reviewed on DICOM workstations in conjunction with typical DICOM images like cardiovascular angiographic x-ray, cardiac US and nuclear images. The clinician has access to comprehensive medical information. The implementation of a standards-based DICOM solution allows care providers to connect a variety of electrocardiographs from different vendors to a single server. For medical facilities there will no longer be a need for a standalone ECG management system with vendor specific ECG review software. In DICOM, ECG data are not proprietary because the digital DICOM ECG file format is an open standard. The files can be accessed by all software products that support the display of DICOM ECG waveforms. For educational purposes ECGs can be transferred to DICOM teaching archives. For purposes of exchange and sharing, files can be sent by email or transferred to any kind of removable digital media. The standardized vendor-independent format also can be of great value for the collection of ECG waveforms for clinical trials, especially for the purpose of drug development.
Conclusions: The use of standardized DICOM ECG format will enable the exchange of diagnostic ECG information for patient care, research, drug development and teaching.

(Abstract Control Number: 258)