Request Outside Digital Images on CD

The PACS section of the Department of Radiology at Virginia Mason requests that image CDs sent to us are DICOM compatible in accordance with Part 10 of the ACR-NEMA Digital Imaging Communications in Medicine Standard.

Ideally, the PACS Administrator of the referring facility should have a DICOM conformance statement for their export application. If this specific compatibility information is not available, the CDs you send should include a windows file named DICOMDIR in the root directory. To determine if you have the DICOMDIR file:

1. Double click the CD drive in Windows Explorer to see files on the CD
2. Look under the file names for the DICOMDIR file

If this file is not in the directory then see if it can be made available through your software program's configuration table. If both of the above are not possible, please include documentation with the disk that this CD does not contain the DICOMDIR file.

Some software programs list DICOM export as an option or may be configured to provide this file. As a rule, if there is more than one study on the CD they will not be in a DICOM-compliant format. It is best to send each study on its own CD.

If the CD contains DICOM compatible data the study can be stored on our PACS system after reprocessing Name and Medical Record information to match that of the patient's Virginia Mason Medical Center registration. Images will be available to our radiologists and clinicians through our Enterprise Viewer once imported to our archive.