L RFC3240 - Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (dicom) - Application/dicom MIME Sub-type Registration (Informative)
Network Working Group D. Clunie
Request for Comments: 3240 E. Cordonnier
Category: Informational DICOM Committee
February 2002
Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) -
Application/dicom MIME Sub-type Registration
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document describes the registration of the MIME sub-type
application/dicom (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine).
The baseline encoding is defined by the DICOM Standards Committee in
"Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine".
1. DICOM Definition
Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) specifies
protocols and formats for the exchange of images, time-based
waveforms, reports, and associated information for medical
applications.
Individual DICOM objects (such as images) may be encapsulated in
files and exchanged by e-mail using the Media Type defined herein.
In addition, a set of DICOM files may be described by an index file,
DICOMDIR, which may accompany the files that it references.
2. IANA Registration
MIME media type name: Application
MIME subtype name: dicom
Required parameters:
"id" is constructed from a DICOM File ID (see DICOM PS3.11). The
total length is limited to 71 characters. Each component is
limited to 8 characters. The delimiter is a forward slash "/".
There is never a leading delimiter (i.e., this is not a
traditional path from a root directory).
If a DICOMDIR (which provides an index of files) is included, then
it will refer to other DICOM files in the file set by use of this
File ID. The File ID is not encoded within each DICOM file. If a
DICOMDIR is not present, then the "id" parameter may be absent.
Note that the DICOMDIR will also have a Media Type of
application/dicom and is distinguished from other files by its ID
of "DICOMDIR".
For example:
"ROOTDIR/SUBDIR1/MRSCAN/A789FD07/19991024/ST00234/S00003/I00023"
Each component shall be character strings made of characters from
a subset of the G0 repertoire of ISO 8859. This subset consists
of uppercase alphabetic characters, numeric characters and
underscore. The following characters are permissible:
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V,
W, X, Y, Z (uppercase)
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 and _ (underscore)
Optional parameters:
none
Encoding considerations:
The DICOM information is binary, therefore the encoding used shall
support lossless transfer of binary information. Typically, the
Content-Transfer-Encoding would be set to "Base64".
Multiple DICOM parts should be included as a Multipart/related
entity [2387]. Receiving agents shall also support multiple parts
as a Multipart/mixed entity. When multiple DICOM parts are
included, one of the parts may be a DICOMDIR, in which case, all
the files referred to by the DICOMDIR shall also be present. The
DICOMDIR is not required to be the first Application/dicom part
encoded in the message, in which case the optional "start"
parameter should refer to the content-id of the part containing
the DICOMDIR.
Multiple DICOM Application/dicom parts may be included with other
types of parts as a Multipart/mixed entity.
Security considerations:
Application/dicom parts contain medical information, including
individual demographic information. Accordingly, their exchange
should be restricted to a secure network or within a secure
wrapper that protects a patient's right to confidentiality
according to local and national policy. The specific security
mechanisms are outside the scope of this proposal. Such
mechanisms as Secured MIME (S/MIME) [2633] or similar might be
appropriate.
Interoperability considerations:
Because DICOM information is specific to the medical (imaging)
domain, generic e-mail applications may not be able to interpret
the information.
The Media Type has been designed in order to allow for
(i) DICOM aware applications to interoperate,
(ii) generic applications to save the files in a form
recognizable as DICOM files, that a DICOM application may
subsequently use.
Published specification:
The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM)
Standard is a standard of the DICOM Standards Committee, published
by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), 1300
N. 17th Street, Rosslyn, Virginia 22209 USA,
(http://medical.nema.org).
Applications which use this media:
Biomedical imaging applications.
Additional information:
1. Magic number(s): "DICM" after 128 byte preamble indicates DICOM
PS 3.10 file
2. File extension(s): ".dcm" is recommended for files saved to
disk (other than DICOMDIR)
3. Macintosh file type code: Macintosh File Type "DICM" is
recommended
4. Object Identifiers: none
Person to contact for further information:
1. Name: Howard Clark
2. E-mail: how_clark@nema.org
Intended usage:
Common
Interchange of biomedical images.
Author/Change controller:
DICOM Standards Committee
3. References
[DICOM] DICOM Standards Committee, "Digital Imaging and
Communications in Medicine", 2001.
[2387] Levinson, E., "The MIME Multipart/Related Content-type", RFC
2387, August 1998.
[2633] Ramsdell, B., "S/MIME Version 3 Message Specification", RFC
2633, June 1999.
4. Authors' Addresses
David Clunie
RadPharm
943 Heiden Road
Bangor PA 18013
USA
Phone: +1-570-897-7123
Fax: +1-425-930-0171
EMail: dclunie@dclunie.com
Emmanuel Cordonnier
Etiam
20 rue du Pr J. Pecker
35000 Rennes
France
Phone: +33(0)299 14 33 88
Fax: +33(0)299 14 33 80
EMail: emmanuel.cordonnier@etiam.com
5. Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Acknowledgment
Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
L.2 Example 1: Simple DICOM File MIME Message (Informative)
From: "Dr Smith" <smith@provider1.com>
To: "Dr Johnson" <johnson@provider2.com>
Subject: test DICOM Mime Type
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 1999 15:15:35 +0100
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: Multipart/mixed;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0027_01BF27A0.9BE21980"
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
------=_NextPart_000_0027_01BF27A0.9BE21980
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message text: this is a DICOM MIME Type example for DICOM File.
------=_NextPart_000_0027_01BF27A0.9BE21980
Content-Type: Application/dicom;
id="i00023"; name="i00023.dcm"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64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=
------=_NextPart_000_0027_01BF27A0.9BE21980--