Preface

This guide describes how to use the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) feature of Oracle Multimedia, which ships with Oracle Database.

For information about Oracle Database and the features and options that are available to you, see Oracle Database New Features Guide.

In Oracle Database 11g Release 1 (11.1), the name Oracle interMedia has been changed to Oracle Multimedia. The feature remains the same, only the name has changed. References to Oracle interMedia will be replaced with Oracle Multimedia, however some references to Oracle interMedia or interMedia may still appear in graphical user interfaces, code examples, and related documents in the Documentation Library for Oracle Database 11g Release 1 (11.1).

Audience

This guide is for application developers and administrators who are interested in storing, retrieving, and manipulating DICOM format medical images and other objects in a database.

The sample code in this guide will not necessarily match the code shipped with the Oracle installation. If you want to run examples that are shipped with the Oracle installation on your system, use the files provided with the installation. Do not attempt to compile and run the code in this guide.

Documentation Accessibility

Our goal is to make Oracle products, services, and supporting documentation accessible, with good usability, to the disabled community. To that end, our documentation includes features that make information available to users of assistive technology. This documentation is available in HTML format, and contains markup to facilitate access by the disabled community. Accessibility standards will continue to evolve over time, and Oracle is actively engaged with other market-leading technology vendors to address technical obstacles so that our documentation can be accessible to all of our customers. For more information, visit the Oracle Accessibility Program Web site at

http://www.oracle.com/accessibility/

Accessibility of Code Examples in Documentation

Screen readers may not always correctly read the code examples in this document. The conventions for writing code require that closing braces should appear on an otherwise empty line; however, some screen readers may not always read a line of text that consists solely of a bracket or brace.

Accessibility of Links to External Web Sites in Documentation

This documentation may contain links to Web sites of other companies or organizations that Oracle does not own or control. Oracle neither evaluates nor makes any representations regarding the accessibility of these Web sites.

TTY Access to Oracle Support Services

Oracle provides dedicated Text Telephone (TTY) access to Oracle Support Services within the United States of America 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For TTY support, call 800.446.2398.

Related Documents

For more information about using Oracle Multimedia in a development environment, see the following documents in the Oracle Database software documentation set:

• Oracle Multimedia Reference

• Oracle Multimedia User's Guide

• Oracle Call Interface Programmer's Guide

• Oracle Database Advanced Application Developer's Guide

• Oracle Database SecureFiles and Large Objects Developer's Guide

• Oracle Database Concepts

• Oracle Database PL/SQL Language Reference

• Oracle Database SQL Language Reference

• Oracle Database Java Developer's Guide

• Oracle Database JDBC Developer's Guide and Reference

For more information about using XML, see Oracle XML DB Developer's Guide.

For more information about medical imaging standards, see the documentation provided by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA).

For reference information on Oracle Multimedia Java classes in Javadoc format, see the following Oracle API documentation (also known as Javadoc) in the Oracle Database Online Documentation Library:

• Oracle Multimedia DICOM Java API Reference

• Oracle Multimedia Java API Reference

• Oracle Multimedia Servlets and JSP Java API Reference

For more information about Java, including information about Java Advanced Imaging (JAI), see the API documentation provided by Sun Microsystems.

Many of the examples in this book are based on the database user PM and the tables MEDICAL_IMAGE_OBJ and MEDICAL_IMAGE_REL, which will be created in the Product Media (PM) sample schema. See Oracle Database Sample Schemas for information about how these schemas are installed and how you can use them yourself.

Conventions

In this guide, Oracle interMedia (now known as Oracle Multimedia) was sometimes referred to as interMedia.

In examples, an implied carriage return occurs at the end of each line, unless otherwise noted. You must press the Return key at the end of a line of input.

Also in examples, vertical ellipsis points indicate that information not directly related to the example has been omitted.

In statements or commands, horizontal ellipsis points indicate that parts of the statement or command not directly related to the example have been omitted.

Also in statements or commands, angle brackets enclose user-supplied names and brackets enclose optional clauses from which you can choose one or none.

Although Boolean is a proper noun, it is presented as boolean in this guide when its use in Java code requires case-sensitivity.

The following text conventions are also used in this guide: