PS3.8 of the DICOM Standard specifies the communication services and the upper layer protocols necessary to support, in a networked environment, communication between DICOM applications as specified in PS3.3, PS3.4, PS3.5, PS3.6, and PS3.7. These communication services and protocols ensure that communication between DICOM applications is performed in an efficient and coordinated manner across the network.

The communication services specified in PS3.8 are a proper subset of the services offered by the OSI Presentation Service (ISO 8822) and of the OSI Association Control Service Element (ACSE) (ISO 8649). They are referred to as the Upper Layer Service, which allows peer applications to establish associations, transfer messages and terminate associations.

This definition of the Upper Layer Service specifies the use of the DICOM Upper Layer Protocol in conjunction with TCP/IP transport protocols.

The TCP/IP communication protocol specified by PS3.8 is a general purpose communication protocol not specific to the DICOM Standard. Figure 5-1 shows this protocol stack.