DICOM introduction and free software The DICOM Standard This guide gives is a brief description of the DICOM standard, which is commonly used for the transfer and storage of medical images. • • • • • • • The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard was created by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) to aid the distribution and viewing of medical images, such as CT scans, MRIs, and ultrasound. Part 10 of the standard describes a file format for the distribution of images. This format is an extension of the older NEMA standard. Most people refer to image files which are compliant with Part 10 of the DICOM standard as DICOM format files. A complete copy of the standard (in PDF format) is avaiable for (drafts of the standard are organized by year). A single DICOM file contains both a header (which stores information about the patient's name, the type of scan, image dimensions, etc), as well as all of the image data (which can contain information in three dimensions).

Software Services LTDDICOMIZER is a DICOM viewer Designed to convert video, capture, scan and display images and documents in PACS Environment. This healthcare software provides a complete solution for healthcare personnel to document patient encounters and to perform related tasks.

This is different from the popular Analyze format, which stores the image data in one file (*.img) and the header data in another file (*.hdr). Another difference between DICOM and Analyze is that the DICOM image data can be compressed (encapsulated) to reduce the image size. Files can be compressed using lossy or lossless variants of the JPEG format, as well as a lossless Run-Length Encoding format (which is identical to the packed-bits compression found in some TIFF format images). DICOM is the most common standard for receiving scans from a hospital. Neuroimagers and neuropsychologists who wish to use SPM to normalize scans to stereotaxic space will need to convert these files to Analyze format.

My freeware software will directly convert most DICOM images to and from Analyze format. Eric Nolf's free software can also convert between Analyze and DICOM. Transfer Syntax UID Definition 1.2.840.10008.1.2 Raw data, Implicit VR, Little Endian 1.2.840.10008.1.2. X Raw data, Eplicit VR x = 1: Little Endian x = 2: Big Endian 1.2.840.10008.1.2.4. Xx JPEG compression xx = 50-64: Lossy JPEG xx = 65-70: Lossless JPEG 1.2.840.10008.1.2.5 Lossless Run Length Encoding The Image on the left shows a hypothetical DICOM image file. In this example, the first 794 bytes are used for a DICOM format header, which describes the image dimensions and retains other text information about the scan. The size of this header varies depending on how much header information is stored.

Here, the header defines an image which has the dimensions 109x91x2 voxels, with a data resolution of 1 byte per voxel (so the total image size will be 19838). The image data follows the header information (the header and the image data are stored in the same file). Further down, I show a more detailed list of the DICOM header as displayed by my software.

Note that DICOM requires a 128-byte preamble (these 128 bytes are usually all set to zero), followed by the letters 'D', 'I', 'C', 'M'. This is followed by the header information, which is organized in 'groups'. For example, the group 0002hex is the file meta information group, and (in the example on the left) contains 3 elements: one defines the group length, one stores the file version and the third stores the transfer syntax. The DICOM elements required depends on the image type, and are listed in Part 3 of the DICOM standard.

For example, this image modality is 'MR' (see group:element 0008:0060), so it should have elements to describe the MRI echo time. The absence of this information in this image is a violation of the DICOM standard. In practice, most DICOM format viewers (including MRIcro and ezDICOM) do not check for the presence of most of these elements, extracting only the header information which describes the image size. The NEMA standard preceded DICOM, and the structure is very similar, with many of the same elements. The main difference is that the NEMA format does not have the 128-byte data offset buffer or the lead characters 'DICM'. In addition, NEMA did not explicitly define multi-frame(3D) images, so element 0028,0008 was not present. Of particular importance is group:element 0002:0010.

This defines the ' Transfer Syntax Unique Identification' (see the table on the left). This value reports the structure of the image data, revealing whether the data has been compressed. Note that many DICOM viewers can only handle uncompressed raw data.

DICOM images can be compressed both by the common lossy JPEG compression scheme (where some high frequency information is lost) as well as a lossless JPEG scheme that is rarely seen outside of medical imaging (this is the original and rare Huffman lossless JPEG, not the more recent and efficient JPEG-LS algorithm). These codes are described in Part 5 of the.

A nice introduction to this the transfer syntax is provided. Note that as well as reporting the compression technique (if any), the Transfer Syntax UID also reports the byte order for raw data. Different computers store integer values differently, so called 'big endian' and 'little endian' ordering. Consider a 16-bit integer with the value 257: the most significant byte stores the value 01 (=255), while the least significant byte stores the value 02. Some computers would save this value as 01:02, while others will store it as 02:01. Therefore, for data with more than 8-bits per sample, a DICOM viewer may need to swap the byte-order of the data to match the ordering used by your computer.

In addition to the Transfer Syntax UID, the image is also specified by the Samples Per Pixel (0028:0002), Photometric Interpretation (0028:0004), the Bits Allocated (0028:0100). For most MRI and CT images, the photometric interpretation is a continuous monochrome (e.g. Typically depicted with pixels in grayscale). In DICOM, these monochrome images are given a photometric interpretation of 'MONOCHROME1' (low values=bright, high values=dim) or 'MONOCHROME2' (low values=dark, high values=bright). However, many ultrasound images and medical photographs include color, and these are described by different photometric interpretations (e.g. Palette, RGB, CMYK, YBR, etc). Some colour images (e.g.

RGB) store 3-samples per pixel (one each for red, green and blue), while monochrome and paletted images typically store only one sample per image. Each images store 8-bits (256 levels) or 16-bits per sample (65,535 levels), though some scanners save data in 12-bit or 32-bit resolution. So a RGB image that stores 3 samples per pixel at 8-bits per can potentially describe 16 million colours (256 cubed). People familiar with the medical imaging typically talk about the 'window center' and the 'window width' of an image.

This is simply a way of describing the 'brightness' and 'contrast' of the image. These values are particularly important for Xray/CT/PET scanners that tend to generate consistently calibrated intensities so you can use a specific C:W pair for every image you see (e.g. 400:2000 might be good for visualising bone, while 50:350 might be a better choice for soft tissue).

Note that contrast in MRI scanners is relative, and so a C:W pair that works well for one protocol will probably be useless with a different protocol or on a different scanner. The figure on the right illustrates the concept of changes to'window center' and 'window width'. Along the top row you can see three views of the same image with different C:W settings.

The bottom row illustrates the colour mapping for each image (with the vertical axis of the graph showing rendered brightness and the horizontal axis showing the image intensity). Consider this image with intensities ranging from 0 to 170. A good starting estimate for this image might be a center of 85 (mean intensity) and width of 171 (range of values), as shown in the middle panel. Reducing the width to 71 would increase the contrast (left panel). On the other hand, keeping a width of 171 but reducing the center to 40 would make the whole image appear brighter. • My free runs on Windows computers.

Availaible as a standalone Windows program or as an ActiveX component (allowing plug-and-play use with Delphi, VisualBasic, C#, VisualC, InternetExplorer and other ActiveX aware programs). It is able to display most types of DICOM image (many other viewers are limited to showing uncompressed grayscale DICOM images) and can automatically detect and open Analyze, DICOM, Genesis, Interfile, Magnetom, Somatom and NEMA images. • is my freeware for Windows and Linux. MRIcro can view Analyze, DICOM, ECAT, Genesis, Interfile, Magnetom, Somatom and NEMA images and convert them to the popular Analyze format. This program uses the same dicom.pas Pascal unit as ezDICOM, but includes a number of additional features.

It is more difficult to use than ezDICOM, but also more powerful. • is my open source successor to MRIcro. It runs on Windows, Linux and Macintosh. The included can convert DICOM images to the popular Analyze and NIfTI standards. • is a free DICOM viewer/browser for Windows that can also anonymize images.

• has a free demo of their Windows DICOM software, with some functions disabled. • has a free version of their Windows DICOM viewer.

• has a free version of their '3D-Doctor' Windows software, with some functions disabled. • distributes a fairly capable DICOM viewer for Windows. • is a freeware Windows, OS2, Linux and Unix program which supports DICOM as well as a broad range of other 2D image formats. ImageMagick can batch convert DICOM images to popular graphics formats (JPEG, GIF, PNG, etc). • is a popular free image viewer for Windows. A plug-in is available for viewing 8-bit DICOM images. This is a useful tool for batch converting DICOM images to JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIF or other common graphics formats.

• is a promising free PC DICOM viewer. • is a set of DOS and Unix tools for manipulating and converting DICOM and Interfile images. • is a free cardiac DICOM viewer (STD-XABC-CD format). It reads DICOM CDs only. Sketches Of A Man Dwele Rar. • is a free Windows viewer which can display DICOM, Papyrus, Siemens, Picker and GE files. • is a fantastic tool for Macintosh OSX computers.

• is available for Windows and Linux computers. • Sebastien Barre's free software (Linux, Sun, Windows) can anonymize and convert DICOM images • David Clunie's C toolkit supports a broad range of image formats. • Onega Wand's is based on the dicomlib toolkit. • Eric Nolf's free image conversion packages (DOS, UNIX, Windows) can convert DICOM to the popular Analyze format. • is a free Linux program that can display, overlay and render DICOM, Analyze or ECAT format images.

• is an impressive looking free Macintosh DICOM viewer. • is an Objective C open source DICOM viewer for Macintosh OSX computers. • is a free XA [lossless JPEG compressed] Dicom viewer for Power Macintosh.

• is a freeware Java-based DICOM viewer and receiver. • is a free Java DICOM viewer. • The Java-based is freewar. • and are Java programs that can view, save and anonymize the data elements and data set of DICOM images. • [Medical Image Processing, Analysis and Visualization] from the NIH is a powerful, promising and easy to use viewer. This Java based application can run on many platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc). • is a freeware Java-based DICOM viewer.

• is a popular freeware Java-based DICOM viewer. Free allow ImageJ to support a broad range of image formats (e.g. Analyze) and image processing functions (including volume rendering). • is a free DICOM viewer for Windows. • is a free Picture Archive and Communication System (PACS) for Windows. It contains a DICOM server, a PACS server (using MySQL) and a web server (Apache).

• aims to deliver a DICOM viewer and storage system. Modelled after the previously free E-Film. • distributes their Central Test Node (CTN) software. They also include • is a free DICOM client and viewer. • The is an open source Windows NT/2000 project. • is a DICOM toolkit including DICOM SCP (Service Class Provider = server) and SCU (Service Class User = Client) programs. Provides documentation for using DCMTK.

In addition, describe how to get the basic DCMTK storeSCP server running. • can read DICOM format and generate nice volume renderings. • is a free DICOM viewer. • Sebastien Barre has a great.

• The team behind OSIRIX shave a number of available. • provides a series of DICOM images using different compression techniques. • distributes some complex DICOM images. • can convert DICOM images to the popular NIfTI file format (other excellent converters are also listed on the dcm2nii page). • NEMA hosts the, which includes most of the DICOM specification documents in electronic (pdf) format.

• David Clunie's is a great source for information about both medical imaging formats and software. Lists medical imaging software and images available on the web.