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E-mail is ideal for ad-hoc connections in teleradiology. The DICOM standard offers the possibility to append DICOM data types as a MIME attachment to any e-mail, thus ensuring the transmission of the original DICOM data. Nevertheless, there are additional requirements (e.g. protection of data privacy) which must be obeyed. Because of the lack of given standards which would grant interoperability as well as manufacturer independence, teleradiology has not been established in Germany until today. Therefore, the IT-Team (Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur Informationstechnologie, @GIT) of the Radiological Society of Germany (Deutsche Rontgengesellschaft, DRG) set up an initiative to standardise telemedicine by using e-mail. Its members agreed that an e-mail-based variant would be the most practicable way to a communication solution -- as easy to implement as to use. In their opinion, e-mail represents the smallest common denominator for a safe data interchange that would fulfill the legal advantages for telemedicine in Germany.

The following article describes the legal aspects of teleradiology in Germany. At first we analyze the general significance of teleradiology in the sense of"achieving medical service over spatial distances". Next we take a closer look at teleradiology according to the German Radiation Control Law ("Deutsche Röntgenverordnung") in the sense of primary diagnostic findings. It is obvious that, apart from the Radiation Control Law, several other laws have to be obeyed when using teleradiology. Currently all of these legal requirements concerning teleradiological service can be fulfilled by applying modern IT.

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