DICOM Conformance Statements

DICOM Conformance Statements are the specifications of the DICOM capabilities and features of a particular product, presented in a standard, defined manner. Matching these documents to devices is critical to determine interconnectivity. Sample DICOM conformance statement templates are defined in part 2 of the DICOM standard.

Each device claiming DICOM compliance is required to provide a DICOM Conformance Statement that describes, according to a standard prescribed format, the encoding or languages (Transfer Syntaxes), the type of information it can exchange (SOP Classes), and additional details to determine whether one device can communicate with another using the DICOM communication protocol. Requiring these documents is a major difference between a DICOM interface and, for example, the HL7 protocol, which has only a limited, and poorly supported formal conformance mechanism.

Every vendor claiming DICOM conformance is required to provide a DICOM Conformance Statement specifying its compliance.

To determine if any two devices can communicate using DICOM, one should carefully match the two DICOM Conformance Statements using the guidelines listed below.

1. Check and compare the application descriptions
2. Match up the DICOM Service Object Pairs (SOP Classes)
3. Match up the User/Provider roles (SCU/SCP and FSR/FSC)
4. Check the number of simultaneous Associations
5. Compare the presentation contexts
6. Compare the communication profiles
7. Check for any special object attribute requirements