March 26, 2014
1300 North 17th Street, Suite 900
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http://dicom.nema.org
E-mail: dicom@medicalimaging.org
MINUTES
DICOM WORKING GROUP THIRTY
of the DICOM Standards Committee
(Small Animal Imaging)
Date:
March 26, 2014
Place:
Teleconference
Organizations on the Roster Present
Burker Biospin
Bruker Biospin
Bruker Biospin
Dana Farber Cancer Institute
iThera Medical
InViCRO
InViCRO
Johns Hopkins
Mass General Hospital
MD Anderson Cancer Center
Mediso
Memorial Sloak Kettering
National Cancer Institute
National Cancer Institute
National Cancer Institute
PerkinElmer
PerkinElmer
Siemens Healthcare
Siemens Healthcare
Philips Healthcare
University of California, Los Angeles
University of Texas SW Medical Center at Dallas
Washington University
Represented by
Andreas Barth
Illes Muller
Uwe Wark
Annick Van den Abbeele
Christian Wiest
Bill Cupelo
Jacob Hesterman
Yuchuan Wang
Mikhail Pivovarov
John Hazle
Attila Farkas
Jason Koutcher
Edward Helton
Joseph Kalen (Chair)
Eve Shalley (Secretary)
Jeff Meganck
Josh Kempner
Hari Kamujula
Heinz Blendinger
Bas Revet
David Stout
Ralph Mason
Joseph Ackerman
Organizations on the Roster Not Present
University of Tennessee
University of Texas SW Medical Center at Dallas
University of Washington
Represented by
Dustin Osborne
A. Dean Sherry
Shanrong Zhang
WG-30 (Small Animal Imaging) of the DICOM Standards Committee
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March 26, 2014
Others Present:
Frederick National Laboratory / Leidos
National Cancer Institute
Ulli Wagner
Stephanie Whitley
Presiding Officer:
Secretary:
Joseph Kalen, Chair
Eve Shalley
1.
Opening
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The meeting was called to order at 10.00 on March 26.
Members identified themselves, their employers, and their areas of interest. A quorum was present.
Members reviewed the agenda and approved the discussion points.
Ed Helton introduced the NCI Team and explained the origins of the DICOM WG 30 and its
relationship to a broader effort at NCI to define informatics to support translational imaging research
and co-clinical trials.
The antitrust rules were reviewed
Brief History and Overview of DICOM – David Clunie
2.
David Clunie provided an overview of the origins of the DICOM standard in the mid-80’s and how it has
evolved over the past 20 years to broaden its scope. He explained that he has been involved with DICOM for
many years, and that he is involved with NCI projects due to his work as a radiologist on cancer trials. His
function on the Working Group will be to support the effort to translate the contents needed for small animal
imaging to DICOM, look for gaps, and provide information about what is already available and could be re-used
by this group.
Dr. Clunie and Ms. Shalley also reviewed the role of the Working Group members and some of the procedures
established by NEMA that will be followed by the group.
3.
Context and Needs, Project Priorities
There was a discussion of what modalities the group should focus on, and which are the priorities, with sharing
of data being the main issue and including information on the rodent model and rodent physiology. The
following gaps and issues were raised by the group:
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In clinical practice there is only one subject, whereas in small animal imaging, you can have more than
one. In Optical imaging you may have two to five animals at one time. DICOM standard as it
currently is presented doesn’t speak to the notion of having more than one subject in front of the
camera at once, and having metadata to track those animals would be useful. This issue also arose in
WG 26 in relation to tissue microarrays that may have many specimens on one slide.
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How animals are housed and handled impacts the uptake of the molecular probe, and therefore animal
physiological data should become part of a DICOM package. Concrete examples of important metrics
include monitoring an animal’s temperature, heart rate, pulse oximetry, or respiration. These could be
individual data points or waveforms (streaming data) - there are multiple pieces of synchronized
equipment providing data. There is infrastructure in place to handle this for human subjects which
could be adapted for small animal. Acquisition context can be encoded in an extensible manner so it is
WG-30 (Small Animal Imaging) of the DICOM Standards Committee
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March 26, 2014
easy to add more variables that may affect quality and practice.
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There is need to automate the mapping of a mouse atlas to a data set, to preserve the spatial
information contained in data set. Another object in DICOM that could potentially be reused is
segmentation object. The group will need to review what DICOM components could be used to satisfy
this Use Case, and create a road map for what tools are needed to accomplish the goals in a standard
way.
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Bruker is interested in creating an animal-specific coordinates system. This relates to the subject
position in the machine, and also what kind of default orientation for imaging views (handing protocol)
should be used in future. WG 25, the Veterinary Working Group, has created a new framework for
orientation, which could be leveraged here. Another issue relates to how to organize hierarchies for coclinical trials, where there are multiple subjects and treatments (project, object, subject, etc.)
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There is a need to incorporate DCE-MR, spectroscopy and Chemical Shift Imaging (CSI) into the
standard. There has been some work done on these standards, but they are not consistently
implemented which creates a lot of manual effort for researchers.
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DICOM should be extended to in vivo microscopy. Since in vivo images not as large but there are
many more of them, it is more like video than single frame imaging. It might be possible to reuse
various objects and mix with multi-frame and video to produce a persistent form of in vivo
microscopy.
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The need for histology and auto-radiography matching with PET or CT, and the fact that there is no
auto-radiography object in DICOM, was also discussed.
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Instrument settings in optical imaging for small animals should be captured. This includes both planar
and tomographic, and fluorescent microscopy and bioluminescent imaging.
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The communication between all imaging modalities is critical and optical is an area that requires a lot
of work – quantitative information is quite different for modalities. One activity of the group can be to
elucidate the Use Case and make it clear we need images and quantitative data on the same system,
regardless of whether animal or human-derived. This helps to establish the gaps we need to fill in
DICOM. The region-of-interest from one modality to the other varies, which causes quantitative
issues. The quantitation aspect of the research is fundamental to the decision process, and adding some
standards and the ability to go from one modality to the other is important.

Members asked if others from their institutions could be enlisted to participate, especially those with
specific expertise – translational expertise from clinical and pre-clinical. This is a good idea, since
DICOM is fairly technical, and we’ll need that expertise to determine how mouse images will relate to
human, and how to encode cross-references.
4.
Working Group Planning
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The group agreed that a monthly meeting to keep the group apprised of activities and discuss any
issues or topics of interest to the entire group. The day and time of the meeting will be determined
based on input from the group.
A face-to-face meeting is desirable, the date and time of which to be determined.
We will likely break out into topic-specific sub-groups, but it is too early to determine what those will
be at this point.
WG-30 (Small Animal Imaging) of the DICOM Standards Committee
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March 26, 2014
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5.
The group requested that David Clunie provide two educational sessions on DICOM – one basic and
one more advanced – so that everyone has enough knowledge to participate effectively.
The group agreed that engaging the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI)
and the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM), which are already
working together on a pre-clinical training program. The World Molecular Imaging Congress (WMIS)
was also suggested as a possible collaborator.
New Business
No new business.
6.
Adjourn
The meeting was adjourned at 12.00 on March, 26.
7.
Action Items
Item
Set up training sessions (DICOM 101 and 301)
Establish monthly meeting time
Reach out to SNMMI and ISMRM
Finish first draft of Strategy Document based on this discussion
Distribute Minutes of the meeting
If desired, send materials to David Clunie with which you are not
satisfied as relates to DICOM compliance; he will run his validators
against them
Review existing DICOM objects for possible reuse by WG 30
Confirm interest in participating in WG 30; enter contact information
into NEMA email listserv
Provide NEMA listserv information to members
Responsible
Eve Shalley, David Clunie
Eve Shalley
David Stout
David Clunie, Joseph Kalen
Eve Shalley
All vendors
David Clunie
All members
Eve Shalley
Submitted by: Eve Shalley, Secretary
Reviewed by legal Counsel: Clark Silcox
WG-30 (Small Animal Imaging) of the DICOM Standards Committee
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