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Vendor Neutral Archive or VNA is one of the most frequently discussed terms among PACS vendors and users. Yet, there was no definite definition of VNA in PACS community. However, VNA is so important that it is going to be highlighted in the next RSNA meeting. So what is the accurate definition of VNA?

These are a couple of white papers that will give you more information about Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) that you can download.

Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA)

Vendor Neutral Archive (VNA) RFI-RFP Checklist.

Very interesting material, thank you for sharing.

Thank you for these files. They are really useful.

Thanks for sharing this white paper, very interesting as well as educational. I agree with most of the contents, but have some doubts regarding VNA handling non-DICOM objects. I would think that this breaks two of the major requirements of a VNA : a) "A VNA provides the capability for query, storage and retrieval" and b) "A VNA does not require data migration and/or conversion of data formats". It is not clear to me how these requirements can be met when dealing with non-DICOM objects such as PDF, XML, TIFF, MPEG etc. How would these types of files be stored in the VNA archive ? Maybe a better approach would be to always convert all types of documents to DICOM ? To have a uniform, coherent archive ? Could you please clarify, thanks.

>>>>Maybe a better approach would be to always convert all types of documents to DICOM ? <<<<

No, that is exactly the "old approach" which still some vendors seem to hang onto. DICOM is great for imaging, as a matter of fact, that should be the default format, however, how would you convert a XML file into DICOM? Especially for cardiology, there are other formats used, and this will only grow for other "ologies".

herman O.

Thanks for your response. Regarding your question on XML as an example.....our product can read the FDA-XML format for ECG, and we convert it to DICOM ECG when we store it in our archive. Our customers see this is a big advantage with our solution, that we store everything in DICOM format.
For other types of data, reporting data of type text or numbers, one can use the DICOM SR object with private dictionary. Or print-ready reports as DICOM embedded PDF. So in theory everything can be stored as DICOM. Guess I have a hard time fully understanding how a VNA can actually work if not everything is DICOM format...Is this where XDS comes into the picture ?