Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) is a standard for storing, handling, printing, and transmitting information in medical imaging. DICOM internally defines network communications protocol that uses TCP/IP to communicate between systems. DICOM files can be exchanged between two systems that are capable of receiving image and patient data in DICOM format. Proposed by National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) (www.nema.org)

A DICOM file contains a header and the image data. The header stores information about the patient’s name, the type of scan, position and dimension of image and lots of other data. The image data part contains all the image information.

DICOM IMAGE HIERARCHY

SPLITTING DICOM Image:

We can split the DICOM image in to header(Demographics) and data(Image) parts using java with the help of dcm4che API.

HEADER PART:

Ø First we have to open the DICOM image for reading using IOStream.

Ø Create a DICOM Object from the stream we opened for reading.

Ø Remove the Pixel Data from the DICOM Object. Now this DICOM Object only containing header information.

Ø Write the DICOM Object in to a separate file.

Splitting Header(Demographics) from DICOM file.

DATA PART:

Ø First we have to open the DICOM image for reading using streams.

Ø Create a DICOM Object from the stream we opened for reading.

Ø Read only Pixel Data from the DICOM Object and store in DICOM Element and write it in another file using byte array.

Extracting Image from DICOM file.

We are in the process of developing a toolkit with networking suport. We will post it hre when ready. Enjoy….

dicomfilereader