Send multiple images as a serie to the practice IT

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Horst Balthasar
Posts: 29
Joined: Mon, 2021-02-01, 11:32

Send multiple images as a serie to the practice IT

#1 Post by Horst Balthasar »

During an examination, several images are stored on our device and sent via DICOM as individual images to the practice IT. At one of our customers, an entry is made in the patient file for each image transfer. However, the customer wants only one entry to appear, which contains a preview of all captured images when opened. To resolve the issue, I contacted the practice IT Support and received the following response:

"It appears that the images are not created and sent as a series, but as individual images. The practice SW creates an entry in the patient file for each "series". So the solution is for the modality to send the images as a series with a series UID, so that only one entry is created in the patient file."

The question now is:

How can I transmit the individual images so that they can be assigned to a series? Do I always have to use the same SeriesUID, but increase the instance number to do so?

Your help would be much appreciated.

Michael Onken
DCMTK Developer
Posts: 2048
Joined: Fri, 2004-11-05, 13:47
Location: Oldenburg, Germany
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Re: Send multiple images as a serie to the practice IT

#2 Post by Michael Onken »

Hi,

in order to send all images in on series all those images must already be part of the same series.

That means, that all the images must have the same value for Series Instance UID (0020,000E). Note that if two images are in the same series, they must also be in the same study, so the Study Instance UID must also be the same for all images. You can accomplish this by using a tool like DCMTK's dcmodify. For example, put all images into one directory. Then call dcmodify like this (if all applicable files end with .dcm9:

Code: Select all

dcmodify -m StudyInstanceUID=1.2.3.4 -m SeriesInstanceUID=5.6.7.8 *.dcm
Note that also a backup of each file is created (option -nb to disable the backup). The UID values 1.2.3.4 and 5.6.7.8 are invalid UID values just used for demonstration purposes. dcmodify can also generate new Series and Study Instance UIDs on its own, however, it does that "per file", i.e. all files would have a different (new) Study and Series Instance UID then. However, you can the instance generation feature of dcmodify to get new UIDs as a first step:

Code: Select all

dcmodify --gen-ser-uid --gen-stud-uid example.dcm
in some arbitrary file example.dcm that is just used as a template to hold the new UIDs.

Then use

Code: Select all

dcmdump +P StudyInstanceUID +P SeriesInstanceUID example.dcm
to dump the freshly generated Study and Series Instance UID from your example file. Use those two values then in the dcmodify call above to set them as new values consistently into each of the desired files.

Best regards,
Michael

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