Network Working Group                                          D. Clunie
Request for Comments: 3240                                 E. Cordonnier
Category: Informational                                  DICOM Committee
                                                          February 2002


       Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) -
             Application/dicom MIME Sub-type Registration

Status of this Memo

  This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
  not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
  memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

  Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

  This document describes the registration of the MIME sub-type
  application/dicom (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine).
  The baseline encoding is defined by the DICOM Standards Committee in
  "Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine".

1. DICOM Definition

  Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) specifies
  protocols and formats for the exchange of images, time-based
  waveforms, reports, and associated information for medical
  applications.

  Individual DICOM objects (such as images) may be encapulsated in
  files and exchanged by e-mail using the Media Type defined herein.
  In addition, a set of DICOM files may be described by an index file,
  DICOMDIR, which may accompany the files that it references.

2.  IANA Registration

  MIME media type name: Application

  MIME subtype name: dicom








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RFC 3240      Application/dicom MIME Sub-type Registration February 2002


  Required parameters:

     "id" is constructed from a DICOM File ID (see DICOM PS3.11).  The
     total length is limited to 71 characters.  Each component is
     limited to 8 characters.  The delimiter is a forward slash "/".
     There is never a leading delimiter (i.e., this is not a
     traditional path from a root directory).

     If a DICOMDIR (which provides an index of files) is included, then
     it will refer to other DICOM files in the file set by use of this
     File ID.  The File ID is not encoded within each DICOM file.  If a
     DICOMDIR is not present, then the "id" parameter may be absent.
     Note that the DICOMDIR will also have a Media Type of
     application/dicom and is distinguished from other files by its ID
     of "DICOMDIR".

     For example:
      "ROOTDIR/SUBDIR1/MRSCAN/A789FD07/19991024/ST00234/S00003/I00023"

     Each component shall be character strings made of characters from
     a subset of the G0 repertoire of ISO 8859.  This subset consists
     of uppercase alphabetic characters, numeric characters and
     underscore.  The following characters are permissable:

     A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V,
     W, X, Y, Z (uppercase)
     1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 and _ (underscore)

  Optional parameters:

     none

  Encoding considerations:

     The DICOM information is binary, therefore the encoding used shall
     support lossless transfer of binary information.  Typically, the
     Content-Transfer-Encoding would be set to "Base64".

     Multiple DICOM parts should be included as a Multipart/related
     entity [2387].  Receiving agents shall also support multiple parts
     as a Multipart/mixed entity.  When multiple DICOM parts are
     included, one of the parts may be a DICOMDIR, in which case, all
     the files referred to by the DICOMDIR shall also be present.  The
     DICOMDIR is not required to be the first Application/dicom part
     encoded in the message, in which case the optional "start"
     parameter should refer to the content-id of the part containing
     the DICOMDIR.




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     Multiple DICOM Application/dicom parts may be included with other
     types of parts as a Multipart/mixed entity.

  Security considerations:

     Application/dicom parts contain medical information, including
     individual demographic information.  Accordingly, their exchange
     should be restricted to a secure network or within a secure
     wrapper that protects a patient's right to confidentiality
     according to local and national policy.  The specific security
     mechanisms are outside the scope of this proposal.  Such
     mechanisms as Secured MIME (S/MIME) [2633] or similar might be
     appropriate.

  Interoperability considerations:

     Because DICOM information is specific to the medical (imaging)
     domain, generic e-mail applications may not be able to interpret
     the information.

     The Media Type has been designed in order to allow for

     (i)   DICOM aware applications to interoperate,
     (ii)  generic applications to save the files in a form
           recognizable as DICOM files, that a DICOM application may
           subsequently use.

  Published specification:

     The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM)
     Standard is a standard of the DICOM Standards Committee, published
     by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), 1300
     N. 17th Street, Rosslyn, Virginia 22209 USA,
     (http://medical.nema.org).

  Applications which use this media:

     Biomedical imaging applications.

  Additional information:

     1. Magic number(s): "DICM" after 128 byte preamble indicates DICOM
                           PS 3.10 file

     2. File extension(s): ".dcm" is recommended for files saved to
                             disk (other than DICOMDIR)





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     3. Macintosh file type code:  Macintosh File Type "DICM" is
                                    recommended

     4. Object Identifiers: none

  Person to contact for further information:

     1. Name: Howard Clark
     2. E-mail: [email protected]

  Intended usage:

     Common

     Interchange of biomedical images.

  Author/Change controller:

     DICOM Standards Committee

3. References

  [DICOM]  DICOM Standards Committee, "Digital Imaging and
           Communications in Medicine", 2001.

  [2387]   Levinson, E., "The MIME Multipart/Related Content-type", RFC
           2387, August 1998.

  [2633]   Ramsdell, B., "S/MIME Version 3 Message Specification", RFC
           2633, June 1999.





















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4. Authors' Addresses

  David Clunie
  RadPharm
  943 Heiden Road
  Bangor PA 18013
  USA

  Phone: +1-570-897-7123
  Fax:   +1-425-930-0171
  EMail: [email protected]


  Emmanuel Cordonnier
  Etiam
  20 rue du Pr J. Pecker
  35000 Rennes
  France

  Phone: +33(0)299 14 33 88
  Fax:   +33(0)299 14 33 80
  EMail: [email protected]





























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5.  Full Copyright Statement

  Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002).  All Rights Reserved.

  This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
  others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
  or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
  and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
  kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
  included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
  document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
  the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
  Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
  developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
  copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
  followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
  English.

  The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
  revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.

  This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
  "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
  TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
  BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
  HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
  MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Acknowledgement

  Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
  Internet Society.



















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