Expand the Internet standard to the DICOM standard: DICOM-QR URL scheme

Recently, a DICOM-compliant image server application (Query/Retrieve Service Class Provider; Q/R SCP) is available commercially or freely in small or large scale. It is better to use these products as an image management sub system of sophisticated image networking applications such as a teaching file system and electric clinical patient record exchange. We describe a new facility to construct medical image database systems using Query/Retrieve Service Class applications. We propose a new Internet Standard; DICOM-QR URL scheme. It is an expansion of the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) standard to comply the DICOM standard. The DICOM-QR URL conveys the complete information to access to the specified images on the Q/R SCP. It is encoded into the compact ASCII string that is easily stored in fields of relational databases or text documents. Finally, we propose that the DICOM-QR URL scheme should be standardized following the Internet Standards Process and we propose many colleagues to join the process.