Re: Debtags for medical issues

[mmiller3@iupui.edu (Michael A. Miller)]

>>>>> "Andreas" == Andreas Tille <tillea@rki.de> writes:

    > On Wed, 27 Jul 2005, Enrico Zini wrote:

    >> works-with::dicom

    >> I definitely need a description for this one as well :)
    >> What is dicom precisely?  If dicom is a raster image
    >> format used in medicine, how about
    >> works-with::image:raster:dicom ?

The DICOM standard (Digital Imaging and Communications in
Medicine) is fully described at http://medical.nema.org.  The
standard supports transfer of medical data over TCP/IP.  It also
includes mechanisms for media communication.  While the words
"DICOM files" are often used to describe the files on that media,
it is safest to consider the media as part of the transfer
protocol, rather than as an image file format.

It might be best to use debtags like works-with::dicom for
packages with full or partial DICOM network and media
communications capabilities (dcmtk for example) and
works-with::dicom-media for packages that only understand how to
read DICOM files (medcon for example).

An issue to be aware of is that the standard specifies levels of
conformance and suppliers and consumers of DICOM systems often
rely on conformance statements to determine which parts of the
DICOM standard are implemented.  I think it important that Debian
be careful to avoid the impression that a works-with::dicom tag
has anything to do with a conformance statement.  That really
needs to be left to upstream authors.

Regards, Mike

-- 
Michael A. Miller, PhD                          mmiller3@iupui.edu
  Imaging Sciences, Department of Radiology, IU School of Medicine