INTERNAL/REVIEW: IDL DICOM Image Viewer / Anonymizer (Uses DICOM Read/Write Toolkit)

Topic:

A handy example DICOM viewer and file anonymizer, written in IDL, is available through the Exelis Visual Information Solutions User Community Code Library section of the web site.

NOTE: This viewer uses the DICOM Read/Write Toolkit. The toolkit offers advanced DICOM support over what is already included in IDL, such as the ability to read, clone and write DICOM part 10 files, the ability to read and write public and private tags, and support for jpeg compressed images. The DICOM Toolkit requires an additionally purchased license. (Note that the IDL DICOM Toolkit is supported on limited platforms. Please see the IDL Help (Contents > About IDL > IDL Feature Support) or contact Exelis VIS for supported platforms). For information on how you can obtain a DICOM Read/Write Toolkit license, please contact Exelis Visual Information Solutions or your local distributor through the Company > Contact Us menu item on the web site.

Discussion: Follow this link to download the zip file that contains the DICOM viewer code from the Exelis Visual Informations Solutions User-Contributed Library:

    dicomviewer.zip

To run the example code, simply place the extracted files from the downloaded zip archive into a directory that is included in your IDL program search path and then compile and run the program file "dicom_viewer.pro".

The viewer includes three interface panels:

1. A file list that includes all available DICOM images in the current directory. Selecting a filename in this list will load the contents of the file into the viewer.
2. A DICOM tag table that displays the codes, lengths, value representations, multi-value settings, values, and descriptions of all tags in the current DICOM file.
3. An image window, which is accompanied by a toolbar of display options. The toolbar options are also available in the Tools menu and in the context menu that is activated with a right click in the image window. By default, the window displays the first frame in the file.

Toolbar Options:

Open DICOM file - This option allows the user to browse for a DICOM file to display (as through the File/Open menu item). It also loads any DICOM images in the current directory into the file list.

Open with iImage - This option will bring up the current image in the iImage tool, a generic IDL utility for interactive image display, exploration and basic processing.

Reset Zoom - This option restores the image zoom factor to the original setting. To zoom, drag a zoom box in the image display using your left mouse button.

Reset Windowlevel - This option will reset the windowlevel of the image relative to all frames.

Windowlevel to current frame - This option, which is enabled for multi-frame files, will adjust the windowlevel of the currently displayed frame according to its minimum and maximum values, instead of the minimum and maximum values relative to all frames.

Open multiframe with iVolume - This option will bring up the iVolume tool with the frames stacked into a volume visualization. iVolume is a generic IDL utility for interactive volume display and dissection.

Next frame - This option will display the next frame in the file.

Previous frame - This option will display the previous frame in the file.

Start/stop animate frames - This option will cycle through the frames in the current file at a rate of 2 frames per second.

Anonymize Selected File - This option will allow you to create an anonymized copy of the selected DICOM file. Optionally, when the Launch Wizard When Anonymizing toggle button (located at the bottom of the Image Window tool bar) is selected when launching the Anonymizer functionality, then a customization dialog will appear to allow you to customize your anonymization settings.

You can also export the contents of the DICOM tag table to a text file through the File menu