A couple of days ago, the 2013 edition of the DICOM standard has been made available. The standard still consists of 20 parts and has almost the same number of pages as the previous edition. However, this does not mean that nothing has changed. On the contrary: altogether 11 supplements and 187 correction items have been incorporated. Also the standard text has been converted to DocBook XML and all other formats (like PDF or HTML) are rendered from it. So, comparing the number of pages of the two PDF versions is not really meaningful. The time-consuming conversion process also explains why the 2013 edition was published only now, a few months after the end of the year. Thanks to the editor David Clunie and all working group members for their great work!
We have taken the opportunity to update the current development version of the DCMTK again regarding the data dictionary. Major parts of the “dicom.dic” file have been generated automatically base on the machine-readable DocBook version of Part 6 and 7 of the DICOM standard. In addition, all recently approved final text Supplements and CPs have been added manually. Since the data dictionary was already quite up-to-date, there should be minor changes only. Of course, the list of SOP classes, transfer syntaxes and so on also reflect the current state of the DICOM standard.
The machine-readable version of the DICOM standard will also help to update the DCMRT module in the near future.