DICODerma: A practical approach for metadata management of images in dermatology
This addresses the problem of stifled innovation in dermatology due to inconsistent metadata management, offering a less disruptive approach to improve adoption of standards for dermatologists and researchers.
The paper tackled the lack of standards in dermatological imaging by proposing practical design solutions and open-source tools to integrate dermatologists' workflow with the DICOM standard, enabling tagging, searching, organizing, and conversion of clinical images.
Clinical images are vital for diagnosing and monitoring skin diseases, and their importance has increased with the growing popularity of machine learning. Lack of standards has stifled innovation in dermatological imaging, unlike other image-intensive specialties such as radiology. We investigate the meta-requirements for utilizing the popular DICOM standard for metadata management of images in dermatology. We propose practical design solutions and provide open-source tools to integrate dermatologists' workflow with enterprise imaging systems. Using the tool, dermatologists can tag, search, organize and convert clinical images to the DICOM format. We believe that our less disruptive approach will improve the adoption of standards in the specialty.