Also it was to facilitate the interoperability among acquisition equipments and other medical devices, as well as their integration within specialized information systems in the medical and health care area. Since then, the appearance and use of computer-assisted medical applications have increased, as a result of the accelerated technological development and the standardization process of medical information representation and handling, which generated a greater demand of development tools for those applications. These applications range from health care information systems and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) () solutions, to technological support systems for medical procedures, such as image-based diagnosis and surgical planning, which previously depended on the knowledge and expertise of the physicians. In such applications, the handling of images coming from different acquisition modalities is essential. These images generated from radiological studies and stored according to the specifications of parts 10, 11 and 12 of the DICOM standard (NEMA, 2004e, f,& g) must be retrieved from storage media as a bidimensional display or in tridimensional reconstructions and other special processes, such as fusion and segmentation of images.

Open dicomdir file