The concept of a standard it that there is STANDARDISATION! The DICOM standard however seems to be one of the most complicated things on the face of the earth and for no good reason as far as I can see. The sole purpose of the DICOM standard is to confuse and annoy!
The idea of it all is pretty sound (make a standard and stick to it), but it seems as though every vendor decides that they only want to conform to a certian portion of the standard. They then write a massive un-readable document explaining how they conform to the standard. The system will then only communicate correctly with other systems when it feels like it!
If the TCP/IP was this daft then we would never have the internet and you would not be able to read this rant. The main reason for my anger is that I have modality worklist working on some of my CR systems, but some of the other systems that I need to setup such as CT, MRI, US etc are having problems connecting. If DICOM where indeed a standard then logic dictates that the system would work on all or on none! (Assuming that the basic DICOM configuration and TCP/IP settings are correct)
I beg and pray that one of these days a standard is finally met by all vendors and not just portions of a standard!
