Report to DICOM Committee on WG7 (Radiotherapy) Business
David Murray, September 14, 2003
Since the last WG7 report to the DICOM Committee (June 22, 2003), WG7 (RT) and NEMA RT Section
meetings were held in San Diego on August 14-15, 2003, immediately after the annual AAPM meeting.
The WG7 meeting was attended by 10 industry representatives, the AAPM liaison member, and an
academic representative. Minutes of this meeting were released on August 29, 2003. A summary of issues
discussed at the WG7 meeting is as follows:

Many change proposals were discussed. CP347 (Fluence Maps) was reviewed again and is
ready for a second presentation to WG6 when convenient. An important clinical issue
regarding interpretation of motorized wedges was discussed, and WG7’s conclusion was that
the current standard does not require modification. A number of other CP’s are ready for
initial presentation to WG6. A new concept of treatment phases was introduced and
discussed.

Application Profiles: The concept of application profiles may be suitable to solve a number
of issues in RT, such as placing requirements on imaging modalities for RT use; for
developing a specification for the Advanced Technology Consortium and for AAPM/ASTRO
demos (see below); and for specifying desired attributes for Query/Retrieve of RT objects.

A number of DICOM issues observed during multi-center and multi-manufacturer ATC trails
were raised and discussed. CP’s will be prepared to clarify or address these issues where
necessary.

No work was done on Supplement 74 (RT General Purpose Worklist Extensions and
Calculation Service Model). The next action item on the work is to further develop use cases.
Discussions were held at both the RT Section Meeting and WG7 Meeting regarding future on-floor
DICOM demonstrations at AAPM and ASTRO next year. One key initiative that is strongly driving
implementation of the RT Dose object in manufacturer’s products is the work being done by the ATC
(Advanced Technology Consortium). Walter Bosch represented the ITC (Image Guided Therapy Center,
rtog3dqa.wustl.edu), one of the participating organizations, at the WG7 meeting. It was felt by WG7 that a
demonstration of support and compliance to the ATC protocols would be very appropriate for the 2004
trade shows, by transferring the CT Image, RT Structure Set, RT Plan, and RT Dose objects conforming to
the protocol to a central booth where tools would be available to view the received data.
Two DICOM symposia were held during the academic sessions at AAPM. One focused on use of DICOM
in RT, the other on more general DICOM topics including IHE. These symposia were not especially well
attended.
Teleconference meetings of the WG7 Ion Therapy subgroup are ongoing, the latest being held on August
27, 2003 and two others meetings scheduled for October 7 and October 26 (at PTCOG in San Francisco).
Although some work remains to be done, there is significant pressure on manufacturers to use early
implementations to achieve the goals of their customers. To avoid proliferation of rogue implementations,
it is hoped to “freeze” a draft of the ion therapy objects at the October 26 meeting, for prototype
implementation.
The next WG7 meeting will be held on Oct. 23, 2003, 1 pm-5 pm and Oct 24 8:00 am-4:00 pm, Salt Lake
City (following ASTRO).