How to mark stored DICOM Hanging Protocols as deprecated?

[gunter zeilinger]

SW developers of our reviewing workstation asked me, how previous
stored DICOM Hanging Protocols can be marked as deprecated in a
standard compliant way. In particular, if there is no "replacement" HP
instance, which reference to the previous version as Source Hanging
Protocol.

My first idea was to store a Key Objection Selection Document which a
particular Document Title code, which refers deprecated HP instances.
Because the IOD for Key Objects Selection Document follows the
hierarchical DICOM Information Model with Patient-Study-Series-Object
level, one would have to use virtual/artificial Patient-Study-Series
entities, to be able to create the KO instances. Another problem would
be, that specifying only SOP Instance and SOP Class UID of the HP
instance would be sufficient for the reference of deprecated HP
instances by the Composite Object Reference Macro in the Content Tree
of the KO instance, but the "Current Requested Procedure Evidence
Sequence", which shall include the list of all Composite SOP Instances
referenced in the Content Tree, uses the 'Hierarchical SOP Instance
Reference Macro', and therefore would require to specify also Study
and Series Instance UIDs of referenced Composite Objects - a
workaround would be to define a 'well-known' Study and a 'well-known'
Series Instance UID for all HP Instances.

Any other/better ideas?

gunter zeilinger
Agfa Healthcare Vienna