{"id":1315,"date":"2021-03-11T12:59:44","date_gmt":"2021-03-11T04:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yohz.com\/blogs\/?p=1315"},"modified":"2021-03-11T12:59:44","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T04:59:44","slug":"creating-an-index-of-the-dicom-image-tags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yohz.com\/blogs\/2021\/03\/11\/creating-an-index-of-the-dicom-image-tags\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating an index of the DICOM image tags"},"content":{"rendered":"

A DICOM image can contain anywhere from a hundred to a thousand tags, sometimes even tens of thousands of tags.<\/p>\n

It’s usually not an issue to search for an image matching a specific tag value on the equipment used to capture the images using the manufacturer’s software.\u00a0 However, if you had a collection of images taken from different equipment, you then had to organize your images somehow in order to keep track of each image’s attributes.<\/p>\n

Not any more.\u00a0 DICOM Search<\/a> is a Windows application that stores the values of each and every tag of a DICOM image into a database.\u00a0 You can then search that database for images that match one or more tag values easily using SQL queries (or a simplified SQL syntax for beginners).<\/p>\n

Basically, you have the power of a relational database engine to search your DICOM images based on their tag values.<\/p>\n

Let’s take a closer look at DICOM Search<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Storing the image tag values<\/h3>\n

Your DICOM images are organized into libraries.\u00a0 Each library can contain images from different sources, or you could just lump all images into a single library.<\/p>\n

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You can populate each library with images stored on your folders<\/p>\n

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or you can connect to a SQL database to retrieve the images to populate your library.<\/p>\n

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Once your images have been retrieved from your folders or from a database, each tag is then processed and stored in a database table.<\/p>\n

Searching for images<\/h3>\n

Say you want to search for MRI<\/span> images of the knee<\/span> where the patient weight<\/span> is 75 or more.\u00a0 This is how you would enter the search criteria in DICOM Search<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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And this is how DICOM Search<\/a> displays the search results.<\/p>\n

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Plain and simple.\u00a0 Using tags, you can use plain words to refer to a tag, instead of the usual group and element numbers.\u00a0 Of course, you can use the group\/element combination if you so prefer e.g. to retrieve the same results above, you would enter:<\/p>\n

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Given that you have the power of a relational database engine under the hood, you can write some pretty advanced queries to retrieve your images.<\/p>\n

Working with the search results<\/h3>\n

Once you have the images from your search results, here’s what you can do with them in DICOM Search<\/a>:<\/p>\n