DICOM Waveform
ToolsThe Problem
Wearable ECG devices record continuous electrical signal data and store it in raw binary formats specific to the device manufacturer. Connecting that data to a clinical infrastructure — a PACS, a CDR, or a clinical workstation — typically requires DICOM waveform objects: a format defined in DICOM Part 17 that describes the structure for representing physiological waveforms, including ECG leads, sampling frequency, amplitude scaling, and channel annotations.
The DICOM waveform specification is one of the less well-documented areas of the standard. The Part 17 specification is detailed and technical, and there are very few open-source tools that implement it correctly. Teams integrating wearable devices with clinical systems typically have to implement this conversion layer from scratch — which means a significant research and development effort before the clinical use case can be addressed at all.
Why We Built It
DICOM Waveform was developed during a project that connected a wearable ECG device to a clinical data infrastructure. The device produced raw binary waveform data in the manufacturer's proprietary format. The target PACS and CDR required DICOM waveform objects. There was no existing open-source tool to bridge that gap.
Building the converter required working carefully through the DICOM Part 17 specification: understanding the waveform module structure, the lead coordinate systems, the encoding requirements for multiplex groups, and the metadata that PACS systems expect to find in the waveform IOD. The result was a working converter that produced DICOM waveform objects the PACS accepted and displayed correctly.
We extracted the tool from that project so that other teams working on similar device integration problems would not have to duplicate the same research and implementation work. Device data integration in clinical environments is already difficult enough without reimplementing a rarely-documented standard from scratch each time.
Key Capabilities
What the converter handles in a device-to-PACS integration pipeline.
Raw binary waveform input
Reads raw binary ECG waveform data produced by wearable devices. Handles the binary parsing layer so that the rest of the pipeline works with structured waveform data.
Valid DICOM waveform output
Produces DICOM ECG waveform objects that conform to the DICOM Part 17 specification and are accepted by DICOM-compliant PACS systems for storage and display.
Configurable lead mapping and parameters
Lead mapping, sampling frequency, amplitude scaling, and channel annotations are configurable, allowing the converter to be adapted to different device output formats without code changes.
Pipeline integration
Designed to run as a step in a device data pipeline. The converter takes input from device data handlers and produces output ready for DICOM STOW-RS or C-STORE delivery to a PACS.
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