Introduction to DICOM-RTV: a new standard for real-time video communication in hospitals

In order to overcome the challenges of managing real-time transfer of video, and/or audio, and associated medical metadata inside the medical theaters (e.g., operating room), a new DICOM communication service standard emerged. Its main objective is to deliver synchronized videos (potentially synchronized with their corresponding metadata) in real-time to surgeons during a surgery inside an operating room. Moreover, it allows, on one side, the transmission of real-time videos to subscribers with a quality of service comparable to the one inside the operating room, and on the other side, provides a standard that will allow the interoperability between the different medical equipment that produce/consume the media essences. This new DICOM extension is called DICOM Real-Time Video (DICOM-RTV). This paper is an introduction to this extension. It mainly presents the different challenges solved by this extension, illustrates it with relevant use cases, and provides the global architecture of the DICOM-RTV system.