That said, there are absolutely better ways of handling almost any of the cases DICOM supports, the issue is that there is almost no standard that is fully backwards compatible which supports everything DICOM does, so we're sorta shackled to it for better or worse. Otherwise you have to deal with trying to explain to underfunded clinics (not the Mayo or Cleveland type) around the world why their expensive machine that they bought second or third hand is no longer acceptable.
