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Introduction and Acknowledgements

This work is part of the National Alliance for Medical Image Computing (NA-MIC), funded by the National Institutes of Health through the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research, Grant U54 EB005149. Information on NA-MIC can be obtained from the NA-MIC website. Author: Steve Pieper, Isomics, Inc. Contributor1: Michael Onken, Offis Contributor2: Marco Nolden, DFKZ Contributor3: Julien Finet, Kitware Contributor4: Stephen Aylward, Kitware Contributor5: Nicholas Herlambang, AZE Contact: Steve Pieper,

Isomics, Inc.   National Alliance for Medical Image Computing (NA-MIC)   Neuroimage Analysis Center (NAC)   The Common Toolkit   DICOM-OFFIS

Module Description

Provides DICOM local database and networking support.

• A new DICOM infrastructure was put in place beginning with Slicer 4.0.
• DICOM data is stored in a local data base, which is based on SQLite.
• DICOM data can be imported from disk into this data base
• DICOM data can be retrieved from a PACS system after proper configuration of Slicer.
• DICOM data can be loaded into Slicer from the local database. A graphical user interface with display of thumbnails is available for data selection.
• Plans for the near future, include support for storing data from slicer into the data base and uploading data from the data base into a PACS system.

Use Cases

DICOM module in use

DICOM Query dialog

Tutorials

Links to tutorials that use this module

Panels

Parameters:

• Servers
  • Start/Stop Listener: Control external process that listens for network connections to populate the local database. The listener port is controlled by the setting in the Query dialog.
  • Start Listener when Slicer Starts: When checked, a DICOM listener will be launched automatically when slicer is running.
• DICOM Database and Networking
  • Import: Use this to add DICOM files from your local file system into the DICOM Database. Selected directories will be searched hierarchically for DICOM files. A checkbox in the dialog controls whether a copy of these files should be added to the LocalDatabase direcory or if they should be pointed to where they exist.
  • Export: (not currently available)
  • Query: Bring up the Query dialog. Add and select servers to query. Use the search options to identify subjects of interest for retrieval. Note that servers typically need to be specially configured to allow clients to query/retrieve. Also note that firewalls may disrupt access and that ports below 1024 require administrator permissions.
  • Send: Send the selected Patient/Study/Series to a remote DICOM node. A dialog will prompt for the destination address and port.
  • LocalDatabase: Directory where image files, thumbnail images, and relational database will be stored. Pick a directory where you will have adequate disk space for the amount of DICOM data you intend to process.
  • Database TreeLocalDatabase: Browse local database by Patient/Study/Series. Selection will display image previews and will enable options such as Send or Load to Slicer. Right clicking on this tree invokes a popup context menu (not yet implemented).
• Slicer Interface
  • Selection: Indicates type of selection level.
  • Load to Slicer: Is enabled depending on selected data. This button will bulk load data to slicer. Typically each series corresponds to a slicer volume. A study will load mulitple volumes and patient may have multiple studies.
  • Export Slicer Data to Study...: Is enabled when a study is selected. This will export a slicer volume as a series of DICOM slice files that are then loaded into the DICOM database. Optionally the entire scene will be embeded in a DICOM compatible manner (not yet implemented).
  • Image Preview: Shows the currently selected images from the DICOM database.

Similar modules

Loading Data

References

See the CTK web site for more information on the internals of the DICOM implementation. This tool uses the DCMTK DICOM library.

Information for Developers