The semantic extension and storage of EECP Hemodynamic Waveforms based on DICOM Standard

Digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) Standard has a detailed description on the Information Object Definition (IOD) of all kinds of medical images and waveforms. With the development and application of DICOM, all medical imaging and waveform devices will support the standard. This article describes the method and implementation on how to encapsulate the EECP Hemodynamic Waveforms data acquired from EECP device, integrating patient information, EECP physiological parameters, and diagnosis and treat information into DICOM Hemodynamic Waveform file. We define Private Data Elements to encode and represent EECP parameters which haven’t been registered as Standard Data Elements. This is the semantic extension of DICOM applied in EECP. The paper introduces following parts in detail: the structure of DICOM waveform file, Data Element, Nesting of Data Sets, the Waveform IOD Modules and the specification of Private Data Element. Then the method and process of our program are analyzed in depth. According to object-oriented methodology, firstly, Data Element, Nesting of Data Sets and waveform IOD with their corresponding operations and services are respectively abstracted into classes. Then the waveforms data and other attributes are assigned to the corresponding Data Members of the waveform class. Finally, they are stored into a DICOM waveform file by invoking related functions.