A medical device supporting and implementing the DICOM standard is defined as a DICOM-compliant device. A “DICOM-compliant” device may be an acquisition device (e.g., CR equipment, CT equipment, MR equipment, etc.), or a workstation, or a server, or any other kind of device able to connect to the DICOM network exchange data with other nodes using the DICOM protocol. For this reason, almost all DICOM devices need to have a network interface.

DICOM devices attached to a DICOM network are often referred to also as DICOM nodes or DICOM peers.

Each vendor marketing a DICOM-compliant device is required to provide a DICOM Conformance Statement for that device: the DICOM Conformance Statement is a document having a well-defined format (which is also specified by the DICOM standard itself) describing which DICOM services the device implements, which optional portions of those services are supported by the device, plus some details about the specific implementation of those services by the vendor.

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