For over 10 years, the digital pathology industry has been riddled with vendors speaking their own language or languages (aka file format). Today a major milestone in interoperability was achieved with the final approval of Supplement 145; a DICOM universal format for whole slide images.  Although vendors will never give up their native tongue, this new supplement creates a universal language everyone can understand in digital pathology, even those outside of our industry.

WG-26, lead by Bruce Beckwith, MD, has worked hard for several years to create supplement 145.  Harry Solomon of GE Healthcare contributed a lot of help over the past year to move this to ballot and beyond.  Harry put forward the following comments in an email to WG-26 today:

I’d like to add my thanks to the members of DICOM WG-26 for the significant body of pathology domain knowledge that has been added to the DICOM Standard, both in this new Supplement 145, and in Supplement 122 in 2008.  That knowledge is now available to further improve interoperability in a field that was early to health informatics standards with the Systematized Nomenclature of Pathology, now known as the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED), and is now poised for a significant leap with digital pathology.

Here are some statistics on that domain knowledge base:

• One major new DICOM Information Object Definition (Whole Slide Imaging) with new concepts to manage the huge WSI data set
• A major revision of a DICOM Information Entity (Specimen) with a rigorous information model
• 56 new data elements added to the DICOM Standard in 14 new or revised modules
• 7 new or revised DICOM structured data templates and 18 new defined value sets
• 80 new coded terminology concepts added to SNOMED, and 36 added to DICOM
• 40 pages of explanatory information about pathology workflow and imaging

Overall, this is another major step forward in the clinical use of digital pathology.  Thank you to everyone who worked hard to make this a reality!  The final document will be available within the next week.