The Association of Electrical and Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
83 years of excellence
Development of DICOS:
Data Format and Transmission Standard for Security Screening
NEMA - The Association of Electrical and
Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
Defense Daily Open Architecture Summit
November 18, 2010
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The Association of Electrical and Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
83 years of excellence
Founded in 1926
≈ 450 member companies in 55 sections (product categories) that manufacture products used in the generation, transmission and distribution, control, and end-use of electricity.
Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance (MITA), a division of
NEMA, developed & maintains DICOM
 a global information technology standard—used in virtually all hospitals worldwide
 ensures interoperability of systems that produce, store, display, process, send, and retrieve medical images and manage related workflow.
ANSI-accredited Standards Developer
Manages 500 standards; about half are ANSI standards
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The Association of Electrical and Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
83 years of excellence
Maintain and extend DICOS airport security implementations, enabling scanning equipment interoperability
Ensure that DICOS capabilities extend to cargo screening and border protection activities to further the DHS/TSA mission
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The Association of Electrical and Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
83 years of excellence
DICOS enables sharing data among different vendors’ equipment. Data includes:
 Images and metadata
 Results of Automated Threat Detection (ATD) algorithms
 Operator/TSO decisions
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The Association of Electrical and Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
83 years of excellence
With interoperability, screening equipment could produce, store, display, process, send, and retrieve information — without regard to manufacturer
Use different Automated Target Recognition
(ATR) / Automated Threat Detection (ATD) algorithms as needed
DICOS specifically addresses the interoperability challenge
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The Association of Electrical and Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
83 years of excellence
Member Manufacturers
 Analogic Corp.
 Applied Visual Sciences
 AS&E
 Aware Inc.
 Brijot Imaging
 DatCard Systems
 General Dynamics
 L-3 Communications
 Optosecurity Inc.
 Rapiscan Systems
 Reveal Imaging
 Safran/Morpho Detection
 Siemens Corp.
 Smiths Detection
 SureScan Corp.
 TeleSecurity Sciences
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The Association of Electrical and Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
 Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory
 Battelle Memorial Institute
 U.S. Navy SPAWAR
Systems Center, Pacific
 Sandia National
Laboratories
 U.S. National Institute of
Standards and Technology
(NIST)
83 years of excellence
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The Association of Electrical and Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
83 years of excellence
NEMA has standards development expertise, member technical expertise, and DICOM experience
A standards project is born
 At the request of DHS, DICOM (medical) was adapted into
DICOS (security)
 DICOM provided a sound technical basis for DICOS development
 Many existing DICOM services and data infrastructure were inherited and leveraged without change
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The Association of Electrical and Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
83 years of excellence
DICOM
Patient
Subject of Exam =
Patient Only
About 3 patients per hour/CT device, depending on complexity of exam, with scans ≈ 8 bags
DICOS
Passenger
Subject of Exam =
Passenger + checked bags + carry-on
1,000 bags per hour/CT device
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The Association of Electrical and Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
83 years of excellence
DICOS Project Status – Phase 1 Complete
Published NEMA IIC 1 v01 (DICOS v01)
August 2010
DICOS overview, including roots in DICOM
Addresses data representation for CT, DX,
TDR
Security scan site agnostic
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The Association of Electrical and Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
83 years of excellence
DICOM experience
Facilitate member discussion & decision
 Teleconferences – Working Groups
• Meeting times determined by the WG
 Full Section and Technical Committee
• Face-to-face Meetings and teleconferences
Monthly Status Update to DHS compiled/ distributed by NEMA
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The Association of Electrical and Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
83 years of excellence
Open standards development arena vs. security-sensitive / classified information
Extensibility
International Implementation
Speed vs Consensus
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The Association of Electrical and Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
83 years of excellence
Ensure DICOS is developed with extensibility in mind
 A standard that can be applied to any potential security scanning environment, including port cargo inspections, customs inspections, border patrol stations
 Include the ability to share images and data reports, to include possible “remote screening” applications
 Incorporate appropriate data encryption safeguards for shared data
 Extend DICOS to support software interoperability that will facilitate rapid update of threat detection algorithms
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The Association of Electrical and Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
83 years of excellence
Extend DICOS implementations to include border protection and cargo security applications
Integrate security checkpoints to create an
“electronic border” capable of seamlessly sharing all data, regardless of source
Formulate a plan to address unique DHS cargo security and border protection needs with DICOS

The Association of Electrical and Medical Imaging Equipment Manufacturers
Q & A
83 years of excellence
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