A testbed project for DICOM images and waveforms integration

Today, in many catheterization labs, angiographic images are stored in DICOM format on CD, and reviewed from this DICOM CD. However, in clinical practice it would be very, advantageous to be able to store and display the images together with the waveforms (ECG, pressure) recorded simultaneously in the cathlab. To this end, a new supplement will be added to the DICOM standard (supplement 30). To gain experience with this DICOM-WV supplement, and to get comments from prospective users, we have initiated a project to create combined DICOM data-sets and to develop a viewer for times-synchronized display of images and waveforms, based on a draft version of the new DICOM-WV supplement. The initial results show that conversion of the waveform signals to DICOM-WV format can be easily performed and that time-synchronous display of images and waveforms opens new and exciting possibilities towards a fully integrated digital cathlab laboratory. Future plans include include a more generic solution to the time-synchronization problem, inclusion of other image modalities such as echo, inclusion of annotations and events and integration with DICOM supplement 23 (structured reporting)