Glossary
DICOM
Also called: Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine
The standard governing medical image formats and transmission, which is why imaging became the first viable target for medical AI.
DICOM defines both a file format and a network protocol for medical images, and it carries extensive metadata about acquisition alongside the pixels. It has been near-universal in radiology since the 1990s.
Where This Gets Misread
Standardization is why imaging AI exists at scale and pathology AI does not. DICOM made image data portable and machine-readable decades before anyone wanted to train a network on it. It is also a source of hidden signal ... metadata and acquisition artifacts give models shortcuts to learn that have nothing to do with anatomy.