Web Access to DICOM Objects. Part 18 of the DICOM standard details an interface to DICOM Objects using HTTP. WADO enables, for example, retrieving DICOM images as JPEG  using an HTTP GET request.

The importance and acceptance of WADO increased dramatically together with the internet revolution and increasing use of cloud services and PACS as a Service. As a result, WADO evolved to include many of the standard DICOM Network Protocol commands and is gradually taking over. The DICOM Network Protocol defined in Part 8 of the DICOM Standard (Network Communication Support for Message Exchange) is still dominant mainly for connecting Imaging Modalities while WADO and implementation specific services over http rules the Web Applications used for viewing the images and related data.

The current version of the DICOM Standard extends WADO into two main parts:

  • WADO-WS – A Web Service version that supports the IHE XDS Integration Profile
  • WADO-RS – RESTful API using XML or JSON that gradually covers all aspects of networking addressed by the older DICOM Network Protocol and includes, retrieval, storage, search and workflow.