Monthly Archives: September 2020

DICOM Search – improved DICOM view (preview)

In the latest iteration of DICOM Search, we can now display your search results in a patient/study/series listing this way:

  • thumbnails are now displayed in the patient/study/series listing

This allows you to easily view the image without having to open it in the main viewing area.

  • you can filter on multiple values

In the above example, DICOM Search will display the images belonging to any patient/study/series containing the word brain OR rubo.

  • similarly, you can also filter on multiple values on the tag values

In the above example, only tags containing the word patient or physi are displayed.

You can now also display multiple images in the DICOM viewer.  You can adjust the position and size of each image panel to your requirements.  For e.g. if you are displaying 3 images, this could be one layout:

or you could lay them out this way:

You can open as many image panels as you require, limited primarily by the size of your display.

When you open multiple image panels, the DICOM details are also displayed for each image.  In the above example. the patient information would be displayed this way:

Similarly, the DICOM tag values found in each of the image are displayed this way:

If you apply a search filter, then only the tags matching the filter are displayed for all the images.

In the image viewer, there is now a magnification layer option.  Say you opened the following image:

You now have the option to magnify a part of the image, and also choose the magnification level and magnification area.

We hope to release DICOM Search early next month.  If you would like to have early access to the product and give it a try, please drop us a line at support@yohz.com.  We welcome any feedback you may have.

Merge or combine TIFF files

We had a user who recently asked if SQL Blob Export is able to merge or combine the extracted single-page TIFF files from her database into multi-page TIFF files.  This feature isn’t built-in, but we have provided an external command line application (MergeTiff) that you can freely use to perform the same task.

You can use MergeTiff on any tif files, including those extracted using SQL Image Viewer, SQL Blob Export, and Access OLE Export.  It is important that the extracted files use names that group the pages into the right order.

For e.g. the default naming convention for exported files in SQL Image Viewer is row and column index, so assuming each row in your result set only had 1 blob column, your exported files would be named this way:

0001_0001.tif
0002_0001.tif
0003_0001.tif

This isn’t going to help MergeTiff determine how to group the files.  What you need is a ‘grouping’ value e.g. say a CustomerID column that identifies the customer each image belongs to.  We then use this naming convention in SQL Image Viewer/ SQL Blob Export/ Access OLE Export:

<CustomerID>_<%row:0000%>

and our exported files may be named this way:

A00123_0001.tif
A00123_0002.tif
A00123_0003.tif
C72186_0006.tif
D12472_0007.tif
E88822_0004.tif
E88822_0005.tif

In this way, we know that for customer A00123, we need to merge 3 files, for customer E88822, we need to merge 2 files, and so on.

To use MergeTiff, you need to provide at least 1 parameter:

  • the search pattern for the files to process using the -i  parameter e.g.

MergeTiff.exe -i “g:\exported images\*.tif” 

Other parameters supported by MergeTiff:

-o

this is the output folder to store the merged files.  If not provided, the merged files will be stored in the same folder as the source files.  If you want to store the merged files in a different folder, you would need to provide the -o parameter e.g.

MergeTiff.exe -i “g:\exported images\*.tif” -o “g:\exported images\merged\”

-d

this is the delimiter that the source file name uses to separate elements, default value is _

In our example, our file name elements use the underscore character e.g. _.  You might use another symbol e.g.

A00123-0001.tif
A00123-0002.tif
A00123-0003.tif
E88822-0004.tif

In this case, you need to provide the -d parameter and the delimiter character e.g.

MergeTiff.exe -i “g:\exported images\*.tif” -o “g:\exported images\merged\” -d “-“

-g

this is the grouping element index, default value is 1.  In our example, the grouping element is the first element i.e. all the characters before the first delimiter i.e.

A00123
E88822
C72186
D12472
E88822

If instead our file named had been named this way:

scanneddocsA00123_invoice1005_A00123_0001.tif
scanneddocsA00123_invoice1005_A00123_0002.tif
scanneddocsA00123_invoice1006_A00123_0003.tif
scanneddocsC72186_invoice1008_C72186_0006.tif
scanneddocsD12472_invoice2010_D12472_0007.tif

and we still wanted to merge all documents belonging to the same customer, then our grouping element is the 3rd element, and we would need to use the -g parameter e.g.

MergeTiff.exe -i “g:\exported images\*.tif” -o “g:\exported images\merged\” -g 3

-n

this is the naming element index, default value is 1.  Following on from the above example, supposing we merge our files by invoice number instead of customer code, we would need to use both the -g and -n parameters e.g.

MergeTiff.exe -i “g:\exported images\*.tif” -o “g:\exported images\merged\” -g 2 -n 2

-ow

use this parameter to overwrite any existing files of the same name

If you want MergeTiff to overwrite any existing files, use the -ow parameter e.g.

MergeTiff.exe -i “g:\exported images\*.tif” -ow

-r

use this parameter to also process files in the input path subfolders

To process files recursively beneath the input path, use the -r parameter e.g.

MergeTiff.exe -i “g:\exported images\*.tif” -r

You can download MergeTiff from here.