STANDARDIZATION IN THE FIELD OF MEDICAL IMAGE MANAGEMENT - THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE MIMOSA MODEL

This paper deals with the development of standards in the field of med ical imaging and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS's), and notably concerning the interworking between PACS's and hospital i nformation systems WS). It explains, in detail, how a conceptual model of the management of medical images, such as the medical image manage ment in an open system architecture (MIMOSA) model, earn contribute to the development of standards for medical image management and PACS's, This contribution is twofold: 1) Since the model lists and structures the concepts and resources involved to make the images available to t he users when and where they are required, and describes the interacti ons between PACS components and HIS, the MIMOSA work helps by defining a reference architecture which includes an external description of th e various components of a PACS, and a logical structure for assembling them. 2) The model and the implementation of a demonstrator based on this model allow the relevance of the Digital Imaging and Communicatio ns in Medicine (DICOM) standard with respect to image management issue s to be assessed, highlighting some current limitations of this standa rd and proposing extensions. Such a twofold action is necessary in ord er both to bring solutions, even partial, in the short term, and to al low for the convergence, in the long term, of the standards developed by independent standardization groups in medical informatics (e.g., th ose within Technical Committee 251 of CEN: Comite Europeen de Normalis ation).