Realization of security concepts for DICOM-based distributed medical services

Exploiting distributed hard- and software resources for telemedicine requir es a fast, secure, and platform-independent data exchange. Standards withou t inherent security mechanisms such as DICOM may ease non-authorized data a ccess. Therefore, exemplary telemedical data streams were analyzed within t he Berlin metropolitan area network using specialized magnetic resonance im aging techniques and distributed resources for data postprocessing. For sec ure DICOM communication both the Secure Socket Layer Protocol and a DICOM-c onform partial encryption of patient-relevant data were implemented. Partia l encryption exhibited the highest transfer rate and enabled a secure long- term storage. Different data streams between secured and unsecured networks were realized using partial encryption.