Evaluating DICOM Compliance for Medical Images in Public Health Facilities in Zambia

This paper focuses on a detailed examination of the compliance of Medical Image Metadata with the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard, specifically within the context of public health facilities in Zambia. The analysis delves into the intricacies of ensuring DICOM compliance for medical images, addressing challenges related to the organization of diverse medical image data, navigating ethical considerations surrounding data authorization and anonymization, and implementing detailed procedures for metadata extraction. The primary objective is to provide a clear understanding of the methodologies involved in large-scale analysis of medical image metadata, emphasizing the compliance of DICOM standards within the public health sector in Zambia. This includes the meticulous collection of image sets from various sources, addressing ethical concerns associated with patient privacy and extracting crucial metadata from DICOM files.