DICOMweb is a term applied to the family of RESTful

DICOM Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) is the standard for the communication and management of medical imaging information and related data. DICOM is most commonly used for storing and transmitting medical images enabling the integ ...

services defined for sending, retrieving and querying for medical images and related information. The intent is to provide a light-weight mobile device and web browser friendly mechanism for accessing images, which can be implemented by developers who have minimal familiarity with the

standard and which uses consumer application friendly mechanisms like

,

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ; also ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other ser ...

and media types (like "image/jpeg") to the maximum extent possible. The standard is formally defined i
DICOM PS3.18 Web Services
The DICOMweb services are distinguished from other DICOM web services by the suffix "-RS", indicating their RESTful nature. The family consists primarily of:

for retrieval of DICOM PS3.10 files, meta data in XML or JSON forms, bulk data separated from the meta data and rendered consumer format images

for storage (sending) of DICOM PS3.10 files or separated meta data and bulk data

for querying collections (databases, registries) of DICOM objects A key feature of the WADO-RS services is the ability to retrieve entire studies and series rather than needing repeated request for individual instances. Other services including support for work lists

an

Examples

Some very simple examples of URL syntax and meta data encoding are described in th
DICOMweb Cheatsheet

Comparison with Conventional DICOM services

Roughly speaking, the DICOMweb services can be compared with the conventional DIMSE DICOM services as follows: Indeed, apart from the different encoding of the request, packaging of the response and protocol used, the services are sufficiently similar that a DICOMweb proxy to a conventional implementation of DICOM DIMSE services can be implemented (this is by design). The conventional DIMSE DICOM services do actually have capabilities that correspond to the instance and frame level

and separate meta data retrieval capabilities

of DICOMweb, though these are not nearly as widely implemented as the traditional study-root study, series and image retrieval services.

History

Earlier DICOM web services used either URL parameters

or SOAP-based web services

to retrieve DICOM objects. The original Web Access to DICOM Persistent Objects (WADO) standard was a joint effort by DICOM and an ISO working group and was released in 2003 a
DICOM Supplement 85
an

The word "persistent" in the name was later dropped. The ISO standard has not been maintained a

has evolved over time. The suffix "-URI" was later added to distinguish what is now called WADO-URI from the newer services. WADO-URI became popular for providing access to both original DICOM files and server side rendered versions of them, and accordingly was included in th
IHE XDS-I.b
profile as one of its required transport mechanisms, After IHE had gone through several revisions of th
XDS-I
profile, it defined a SOAP-based mechanism for transferring images (the RAD-69 transaction), and this was added to DICOM retrospectively, extended, and became WADO-WS, which was subsequently retired since it was incomplete and not being maintained. As part o
DICOM Supplement 118 - Application Hosting
finalized in 2010, an XML "native DICOM model" was introduced that defined bi-directional transcoding of DICOM datasets between the conventional binary representation and an XML representation. An independent group of developers defined an alternative transport mechanism
Medical Imaging Network Transport (MINT)
and proposed it as a
extension
to DICOM. Though MINT was not adopted in its entirety, the developers were assimilated b
DICOM WG 27
and several key features of MINT were defined as extensions t

Historical information about MINT can be found at th
original MINT Google Code site
The current set of DICOM web services i

which include DICOMweb, have evolved (or are being extended) through the following supplements:
DICOM Supplement 85 - Web Access to DICOM Objects (WADO)

DICOM Supplement 148 - Web Access to DICOM Persistent Objects by Means of Web Services Extension of the Retrieve Service (WADO Web Service)

DICOM Supplement 161 - WADO by means of RESTful Services

DICOM Supplement 163 - Store Over the Web by RESTful Services (STOW-RS)

DICOM Supplement 166 - Query based on ID for DICOM Objects by RESTful Services (QIDO-RS)

DICOM Supplement 170 - Server Options RESTful Services

DICOM Supplement 171 - Unified Procedure Step by REpresentational State Transfer (REST) Services

DICOM Supplement 174 - RESTful Rendering

DICOM Supplement 183 - PS3.18 Web Services Re-Documentation

DICOM Supplement 193 - REST Notifications

DICOM Supplement 194 - RESTful Services for Non-Patient Instances

DICOM Supplement 198 - Retirement of WADO-WS

DICOM Supplement 203 - Thumbnail Resources for DICOMweb

DICOM Supplement 211 - DICOMweb Support for Retrieve via application/zip

DICOM Supplement 228 - DICOMweb API for Server-Side Volumetric Rendering
Take care to always use the current DICOM standard though, rather than implementing from any supplement, since corrections and additions have been incorporated over time.