DICOMDIR and Media Interchange

[update 24 March 2023: Latest releases of HRZ software can be found on HRZ website - www.hrzkit.com]

DICOMDIR, Have you heard this term? What does it mean? Do I need this in my system? Lots of questions. Let's try to answer some.

Here's a list with quick information about DICOMDIR:

1. Standard DICOM CD/DVD should have a file named DICOMDIR in its root directory.
2. The DICOMDIR file has in it records that hold paths to DICOM files on the media.
3. DICOMDIR is a DICOM Object holding a sequence of DICOMDIR records nodes each having a type like PATIENT, STUDY, SERIES and IMAGE
4. The DICOMDIR file include key attributes from the data on the media such as Patient Name, Patient ID, Study ID, Study Date.
5. The file names of DICOM files on a standard DICOM CD/DVD should be capital alphanumeric up to 8 characters with no suffix.
6. The CD/DVD may include other files that are not DICOM. The DICOMDIR file does not reference them.
7. The mandatory elements of the DICOMDIR nodes are not 1-2-1 with the mandatory elements in the DICOM Objects. For example Study ID which is Type 2 in DICOM Image objects is Type 1 in DICOMDIR STUDY Record. So when creating your DICOM images if you intend to create DICOMDIR for them, add these elements too.

There are two ways DICOM application can collaborate with one another. They can communicate over TCP/IP network connection or they can exchange files over some physical media.

The first figure in the DIOM standard makes sense eventually

The picture above, which is by the way the first figure in the DICOM standard (page 10 of chapter 1), explains that very well although when I first looked at thirteen years ago it it didn't mean anything to me.
It is worth staying a bit longer on this figure because it has a lot of valuable information in it so lets work it top to bottom.

Converting Bitmap, JPEG and PDF to DICOM

Before we move any further, the examples in this post are included in HRZ's MODALIZER-SDK DICOM C# Examples package. Non programmers, can achieve the same results and much more using MODALIZER+ DICOM Wizard, HRZ's administrative PACS workstation. Let's start.

Imagine you're a dermatologist taking pictures of patients' skin for treatment tracking using a digital camera. The pictures are JPEG's and have no patient info in them. If you could convert them to DICOM and send them to the clinic PACS, that would be a great advancement.

Introduction to DICOM - Chapter 3 - DICOM Elements

Chapter 3 – DICOM Elements

Let’s start with a useful example. Suppose you are a dermatologist and that you use your Smartphone digital camera to record and track patients’ skin condition. You practice a simple procedure that is basically this:

1. Take a photo

2. Send it to yourself by email

3. Open the email on your laptop and save the picture in a folder having the patient name.

As programmers, we don’t have to talk much about the flows of this practice but for a small, one doctor clinic, this might just work.

In this lesson, we’ll take the JPEG image and DICOMIZE it. When we DICOMIZE an Image we wrap the image in a DICOM envelope and add important data that is required by the DICOM standard in order to enable all DICOM enabled applications to read and display the image correctly. It’s true that non DICOM application can display the JPEG image just as it is now without DICOMIZING but that’s another story.

Introduction to DICOM - Chpater 2 - Why is it this way in DICOM?

Introduction to DICOM
Chpater 2 - Why is it this way in DICOM?
Many times when I explain features and aspects of DICOM I get questions like, “Why do you need DICOM if you have JPEG and XML?”; or, ”why is DICOM so complicated?”. Many variants of this question come up over and over again. These types of questions can be very broad or very specific and relate to all kind of choices that the people who write the standard make and the options that they take.

Introduction to DICOM - Chapter 1 - Introduction

Introduction to DICOM

Chapter 1: Introduction

DICOM is a software integration standard that is used in Medical Imaging. All modern medical imaging systems (AKA Imaging Modalities) Equipment like X-Rays, Ultrasounds, CT (Computed Tomography), and MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) support DICOM and use it extensively.

In this tutorial I present a high level review of DICOM. We will look at DICOM from the user point of view trying to avoid the fine details when possible.

New releases of MODALIZER+ and MODALIZER-SDK

A quick update on HRZ latest software releases. We've released MODALIZER+ V6.1 with video capture capabilities. Check the post on HRZ web site. And also a new release of MODALIZER-SDK (version 3.2.2.4) that is available on HRZ downloads page.

Hello Dubai! A visit to ArabHealth 2023

The Moon over Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai

The Abraham Accords opened the UAE to Israelis and here I am in Dubai for the ArabHealth 2023 convention. I'm not a big fan of trade shows but when the opportunity came up I just couldn't say no. Add to that the 10% discount on Emirates flights a week before and after the show and the connection flight to Colombo, Sri Lanka, one of my favorite surf destinations, and there you go, business and pleasure comes together. 

Business first, how can you make business in a trade show? 

1. Set up a booth, you may say? Well, for a small company like HRZ, when looking at the huge pavilions of GE and Siemens, I don't think so. Actually I tried this once at MEDICA and wasn't happy at all with the results.