Image presentation consistency is achieved by the DICOM Presentation State standard. This describes and communicates the presentation information that are applied to the image. The most common and/or important application for this DICOM object is the encoding of overlay information such as used for measurements, text, comments, etc. on the images.

The Presentation State includes the zoom factor, its specific window width and level value, displayed overlays, masks and shutters and the image orientation parameters.

Presentation States are defined for both grayscale and color.

All this presentation information can be preserved in the DICOM Presentation Object and sent with the image to other workstations, making it possible to preserve the same appearance. These objects can be stored on an archive and retrieved later using the regular storage services.

The Softcopy Presentation State Objects contain information about the particular series, study and patient that they belong to. When querying an archive for all the study information of a patient, the Presentation States are identified in their own series, identified with the modality PR. One can create a single Presentation State for multiple images, for example, for all of the images in a particular series. This can be done by using pointers within the Presentation State defining for which images they apply.