Rapid Design and Development of a Network Isolated DICOM Service Class Provider Device

Abstract

Integrating vendor equipment and instruments into a corporate pharmaceutical research environment can be challenging and in light of recently reported cyber-attacks across industries and ongoing threats, additional security measures add to the challenge. In theory, Windows 10-based equipment coupled with the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) protocol should make it easier for instrument integration. A challenge arose with the onboarding of 2 new Microsoft Windows 10, DICOM compliant, Pre-clinical Positron Emission Tomography and Computed Tomography (PET/CT) instruments post acquisition when we discovered that we were restricted from connecting them to our corporate network. These new instruments were scheduled to run studies the following week. The coordinating of PET studies is complex, so schedule disruption incurs costs and long-term scheduling impacts. The solution was to develop a DICOM Service Class Provider (SCP) device using a commodity beagleboard.org BeagleBone Black (BBB) Rev. C device, the Offis DCMTK open source toolkit, and automation code written in Python. The BBB device provides network and DICOM communication from the instrument to the BBB, it provides the corporate network connectivity needed to NFS mount the network attached storage (NAS) system, isolated the two networks, and moves the files to the appropriate NAS share. The design went from concept to production ready in less than 24 h, providing a cost-effective, reliable, robust, and easily supported solution. The device satisfies internal and best practice security concerns, and it isolates the instrument from the network adding a layer of cyber resilience protection for the instrument.