Dynamic DICOM configuration in a service-oriented medical device architecture.

A surgical intervention raises additional requirements to a medical device network, be it security concerns or the demand for just-in-time integration of an additional devices. The German national flagship project OR.NET aims to satisfy these requirements by defining, implementing and validating an integration solution for safe and dynamic networking. This work presents an approach to incorporate imaging related medical devices into a dynamic plug and play operating room (OR) network utilizing the existing Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) protocol. The presented approach was created as part of the OR.NET project to realize the integration of DICOM devices into the developed infrastructure, both in regard to newly created DICOM devices with direct support of the OR.NET protocol and the integration of existing DICOM devices (e.g. image archives) employing a gateway. Preliminary evaluation results indicate that the approach is viable and that no critical transmission delays are introduced by the prototypical gateway implementation.