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XML-Based DICOM Data Format provides improved data structure without loss of information, according to a study published in January 2009 'The Journal of Digital Imaging'.

 

Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) is the most widely used standard by hospitals in transmission of digital medical images. This is because the DICOM format enables integration of digital information from scanning machines, printers, workstations etc from different manufacturers into a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS).

The study was conducted by Cong Yu and Zhihong Yao. The abstract of the study is as follows:

To enhance the readability, improve the structure, and facilitate the sharing of digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) files, this research proposed one kind of XML-based DICOM data format. Because XML Schema offers great flexibility for expressing constraints on the content model of elements, we used it to describe the new format, thus making it consistent with the one originally defined by DICOM. Meanwhile, such schemas can be used in the creation and validation of the XML-encoded DICOM files, acting as a standard for data transmission and sharing on the Web. Upon defining the new data format, we started with representing a single data element and further improved the whole data structure with the method of modularization. In contrast to the original format, the new one possesses better structure without loss of related information. In addition, we demonstrated the application of XSLT and XQuery. All of the advantages mentioned above resulted from this new data format.

Source: The Journal of Digital Imaging