Master Thesis in Software Engineering & Management REPORT NO. 2009:003 ISSN: 1651-4769 Achieving Safe DICOM Software in Medical Devices Kevin Debruyn IT University of Göteborg Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg Göteborg, Sweden 2009 Student Kevin Debruyn (820717-2795) Contact Information Phone: +46 73 7418420 / Email:
[email protected] Course Supervisor Karin Wagner Course Coordinator Kari Wahll Start and End Date 21 st of February 2008 to 30 th of March 2009 Size 30 Credits Subject Achieving Safe DICOM Software in Medical Devices Overview The present document constitutes the project report that introduces, develops and presents the results of the thesis carried out by a master student of the IT University in Göteborg, Software Engineering & Management during Spring 2008 through Spring 2009 at Micropos Medical AB . Summary This paper reports on an investigation on how to produce a reliable software component to extract critical information from DICOM files. The component shall manipulate safety-critical medical information, i.e. patient demographics and data specific to radiotherapy treatments including radiation target volumes and doses intensity. Handling such sensitive data can potentially lead to medical errors, and threaten the health of patients. Hence, guaranteeing reliability and safety is an essential part of the development process. Solutions for developing the component from scratch or reusing all or parts of existing systems and libraries will be evaluated and compared. The resulting component will be tested to verify that it satisfies its reliability requirements. Subsequently, the component is to be integrated within an innovating radiotherapy positioning system developed by a Swedish start-up, Micropos .