Article:
Designing Digital Diagnostics: (Meta)data in Clinical Radiology

Simple item page
dc.creatorFriedrich, Kathrin
dc.date.accessioned2024-03-01T11:35:45Z
dc.date.available2024-03-01T11:35:45Z
dc.date.issued2020
dc.description.abstractSince the 1990s Western clinical radiology has been confronted with a fundamental media-induced change – the so-called analogue-dig- ital migration. Film-based diagnostics and archiving of radiological images are transformed into digital interfaces and infrastructures. Networked software applications, namely picture archiving and com- munication systems (PACS), provide a new basis for processing and displaying image data. The design and implementation of PACS and their (user) interfaces challenged, amongst others, the search for data standards for digital diagnostics. The data format DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communication) was developed to provide the techno- logical basis for encoding image data. Simultaneously, DICOM deter- mines how patients’ bodies are rendered machine-readable and how radiologists are able to gain software-based insights. A main func- tion of DICOM metadata is encoding and continuously actualising patient identification for technological and human actors. A misiden- tification of image data and specific patient could lead to fatal errors in the furthe+r treatment process. Accordingly, metadata themselves meander between being invisible to the human user and being essen- tial and hence necessarily visible information for diagnostics. Shift- ing between normativity and fluidity, DICOM metadata enables new practices of radiological diagnostics, which literally bear vital conse- quences for patients and, on another level, for the profession of radiol- ogy. The paper analyses inherent politics and tensions of metadata from a media theoretical point of view by employing the case of the DICOM standard. Based on subject-specific discourses, data models as well as an in-depth examination of exemplary DICOM metadata it shows how (meta)data politics redefine diagnostic infrastructures and routines as well as gain impact on epistemic and aesthetic prac- tices at the turn of the analogue-digital migration.en
dc.identifier.doi10.14361/dcs-2020-0207
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/21887
dc.identifier.urihttps://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.14361/dcs-2020-0207/html
dc.identifier.urihttps://mediarep.org/handle/doc/23195
dc.languageeng
dc.publishertranscript
dc.publisher.placeBielefeld
dc.relation.isPartOfissn:2364-2114
dc.relation.ispartofseriesDigital Culture & Society
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 Generic
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
dc.subjectDigital imagingen
dc.subjectdata processingen
dc.subjectclinical radiologyen
dc.subjectdata modelen
dc.subjectDICOMen
dc.subject.ddcddc:700
dc.subject.ddcddc:600
dc.titleDesigning Digital Diagnostics: (Meta)data in Clinical Radiologyen
dc.typearticle
dc.type.statuspublishedVersion
dspace.entity.typeArticle
local.coverpage2024-03-02T02:31:12
local.source.epage132
local.source.issue2
local.source.issueTitleThe Politics of Metadata
local.source.spage115
local.source.volume6

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
DCS_2020_6-2_115-132_Designing_Friedrich_.pdf
Size:
1018.45 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Original PDF with additional cover page.
Download

Collections

6(2) 2020: The Politics of Metadata