Ed de Moel

DICOM Terms and Abbreviations

DICOM Terms and Abbreviations

VR is PN

Value Representation "Person Name"
A character string encoded using a 5 component convention. The character code 5CH (the BACKSLASH "\" in ISO-IR 6) shall not be present, as it is used as the delimiter between values in multiple valued data elements. The string may be padded with trailing spaces. The five components in their order of occurrence are: family name complex, given name complex, middle name, name prefix, name suffix. Any of the five components may be an empty string. The component delimiter shall be the caret "^" character (5EH). Delimiters are required for interior null components. Trailing null components and their delimiters may be omitted. Multiple entries are permitted in each component and are encoded as natural text strings, in the format preferred by the named person. This conforms to the ANSI HISPP MSDS Person Name common data type.
This group of five components is referred to as a Person Name component group.
For the purpose of writing names in ideographic characters and in phonetic characters, up to 3 groups of components (see Annex H examples 1 and 2) may be used. The delimiter for component groups shall be the equals character "=" (3DH). The three component groups of components in their order of occurrence are: a single-byte character representation, an ideographic representation, and a phonetic representation.
Any component group may be absent, including the first component group. In this case, the person name may start with one or more "=" delimiters. Delimiters are required for interior null component groups. Trailing null component groups and their delimiters may be omitted.
Precise semantics are defined for each component group. See section 6.2.1.
Examples:
Rev. John Robert Quincy Adams, B.A. M.Div.
"Adams^John Robert Quincy^^Rev.^B.A. M.Div."
[One family name; three given names; no middle name; one prefix; two suffixes.]
Susan Morrison-Jones, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer
"Morrison-Jones^Susan^^^Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer"
[Two family names; one given name; no middle name; no prefix; two suffixes.]
John Doe
"Doe^John"
[One family name; one given name; no middle name, prefix, or suffix. Delimiters have been omitted for the three trailing null components.]
(For examples of the encoding of Person Names using multi-byte character sets see Annex H)
Notes
1. This five component convention is also used by HL7 as defined in ASTM E-1238-91 and further specialized by the ANSI MSDS.
2. In typical American and European usage the first occurrence of "given name" would represent the "first name". The second and subsequent occurrences of the "given name" would typically be treated as a middle name(s). The "middle name" component is retained for the purpose of backward compatibility with existing standards.
3. The "Degree" component present in ASTM E-1238-91 is absorbed into the "Suffix" component.
4. The implementor should remain mindful of earlier usage forms which represented "given names" as "first" and "middle" and that translations to and from this previous typical usage may be required.
5. For reasons of backward compatibility with versions of this standard prior to V3.0, person names might be considered a single family name complex (single component without "^" delimiters).
Character Set: Default Character Repertoire and/or as defined by (0008,0005) excluding Control Characters LF, FF, and CR but allowing Control Character ESC.
Size Restriction(s): 64 chars maximum per component group (see NOTE in 6.2)

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X

O-Tech Parts of this document are taken (with permission) from
Herman Oosterwijk's "DICOM Expert" Cheat Sheet
© Copyright OTech, Inc.
P.O. Box 260637
Plano, Texas 75026

herman@otechimg.com