Application Profiles

Application profiles are critical for accommodating compatibility among exchange media such as CD. Note that Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) also defines Profiles. These have a similar function to the DICOM Application Profiles but are distinct and defined by IHE.

The DICOM standard has specified several profiles (different for various applications), which contain only a limited number of choices.
Some examples:

Cardiology profile can store an image only with specific transfer syntax, which is “lossless” JPEG compression.
Other profiles are specified for ultrasound, CT/MR and dentistry in order to accommodate teaching files that store any image type (from multiple SOP Classes to more generic media). There is a general purpose CD-R and DVD application profile specified.
There are standard identifications for these profiles that are used to uniquely define these, such in a DICOM Conformance Statement.
The specification of each media storage application profile consists of the following:

The description of the application addressed by the application profile and its context of the application.
The selection, at the data format layer, of a number of specific objects and associated SOP Classes. For each SOP Class it is specified if its support is required or optional within the context of this profile.
The selection of a specific media format definition and this is done by reference to PS 3.12 of the DICOM Standard, which specifies the selected physical medium, a specific associated media format and the mapping of this media format services onto the DICOM file service.
The selection of appropriate transfer syntaxes and selection of a specific security profile
Other choices for specific attributes facilitating interoperability such as specific color encoding, etc.