Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM)
Supplement 104: DICOM Encapsulation of PDF Documents
Prepared by:
DICOM Standards Committee, Working Group 6
1300 N. 17th Street Suite 1847
Rosslyn, Virginia 22209 USA
VERSION: Final Text
March 22, 2005
DICOM Encapsulation of PDF Documents
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Table of Contents 1
Foreword......................................................................................................................................................... 4 2
Scope and Field of Application....................................................................................................................... 4 3
Changes to NEMA Standards Publication PS 3.2-2004................................................................................. 5 4
PART 2 Addendum......................................................................................................................................... 5 5
Changes to NEMA Standards Publication PS 3.3-2004................................................................................. 7 6
2 Normative references............................................................................................................................... 8 7
A.1.2.xx Encapsulated Document IE................................................................................ 10 8
A.YY ENCAPSULATED DOCUMENT INFORMATION OBJECT DEFINITION............................. 11 9
A.YY.1 Encapsulated PDF Information Object Definition ........................................................ 11 10
A.YY.1.1 Encapsulated PDF IOD Description................................................................... 11 11
A.YY.1.2 Encapsulated PDF Entity-Relationship Model ................................................... 11 12
A.YY.1.3 Encapsulated PDF IOD Module Table............................................................... 11 13
A.YY.1.4 Encapsulated PDF IOD content constraints....................................................... 12 14
C.YY ENCAPSULATED DOCUMENT MODULES ......................................................................... 12 15
C.YY.1 Encapsulated Document Series Module...................................................................... 12 16
C.YY.2 Encapsulated Document Module................................................................................. 14 17
F.5.31 Encapsulated Document directory record definition .................................................... 17 18
Changes to NEMA Standards Publication PS 3.4-2004...............................................................................19 19
B.5 STANDARD SOP CLASSES................................................................................................. 19 20
I.4 MEDIA STANDARD STORAGE SOP CLASSES............................................................................. 19 21
Changes to NEMA Standards Publication PS 3.6-2004...............................................................................20 22
Changes to NEMA Standards Publication PS 3.16-2004............................................................................. 22 23
Part 16 Addendum........................................................................................................................................ 22 24
CID 7020 Document Titles .......................................................................................................... 23 25
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DICOM Encapsulation of PDF Documents
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Foreword 29
This supplement proposes additions to the DICOM Standard to provide for the encapsulation of 30
documents that have been encoded using the Portable Document Format (PDF) so that these documents 31
may be exchanged between various types of equipment using DICOM messages. 32
This Supplement proposes changes to the following Parts of the DICOM Standard: 33
PS 3.2 - Conformance 34
PS 3.3 - Information Object Definitions 35
PS 3.4 - Service Class Specifications 36
PS 3.6 - Data Dictionary 37
PS 3.16 - Content Mapping Resource 38
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Scope and Field of Application 40
Clinical evidence, measurements and reports are often generated or scanned into a PDF format. 41
The PDF format is well documented in a publicly available form, requires no license fees for its use, and is 42
supported by tools from multiple vendors as well as from free, public domain sources. In order to exchange 43
and/or handle these documents in an efficient manner in an imaging environment, it is useful to be able to 44
“wrap” these types of documents in a DICOM container, so they can be exchanged as DICOM objects 45
using the DICOM Storage Service and accordingly archived and retrieved. 46
Some original data objects (scanned documents, forms, waveforms, measurements, and text) could also 47
be exchanged using other, more comprehensive encoding such as the DICOM Secondary Capture, 48
Waveform or SR objects. However, this proposal for PDF encapsulation is no different than using the 49
Secondary Capture (SC) object instead of other alternative objects such as XA or US. Furthermore, some 50
forms of data to be exchanged are not yet standardized. 51
Therefore, this supplement defines a SOP Class to encapsulate PDF documents into a Composite DICOM 52
SOP Instance, so that it can be exchanged using the appropriate Service Classes and stored and retrieved 53
accordingly. 54
The PDF format specification is available from: http://partners.adobe.com/asn/tech/pdf/specifications.jsp 55
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DICOM Encapsulation of PDF Documents
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Changes to NEMA Standards Publication PS 3.2-2004 57
Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine 58
PART 2 Addendum 59
Conformance 60
