DICOMan^Ó

-- The Universal DICOM Wizard for Radiation Oncology and  Radiology

Figure 1 The typical look of DICOMan.

What is DICOM?

DICOM stands for Digital Imaging and COmmunication in Medicine. It is a standard developed by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) in conjunction with American College of Radiology (ACR). It covers most image formats for all of medicine, and it also specifies messaging and communication protocols between imaging modalities and their utilizing modalities. In 1997, four DICOM extension modules for radiation therapy (RT Structure Set, RT Dose, RT Plan and RT Image) were added, the fifth RT module, RT Record, was added in 1999. Currently it supports 47 active modalities (CT, MRI, CR, US, PET, SPECT...).

What is DICOMan?

As stated in the DICOM standard documents,  the DICOM Standard committee does not provide any implementation details of any features of the standard, nor does it specify overall set of features and functions to be expected from specific systems, or provides procedures to test/validate an implementation’s conformance to the standard. It is the manufacturers’ responsibilities to comply with this standard and make their implementation interchangeable with others. When incompatibility problems occur, the end users usually do nothing but wait for a new release. DICOMan is a Windows-based application that was developed to solve a wide variety of DICOM incompatibility problems to meet immediate clinical needs. It provides the users with a universal viewer that displays DICOM image and RT objects; it has a DICOM pusher that moves local DICOM objects to remote systems; the built-in DICOM retriever finds and fetches specified DICOM objects from PACS or imaging modalities; the comprehensive editor validates the standard conformance, pin-point the problems if there were any, or simply edits the entry of any data element; it also equipped with a format converter that converts DICOM images into regular formats to facilitate research or education activities.

Why Do We Need DICOMan?

High quality diagnostic imaging for target definition and image guidance plays an essential role in the process of IMRT / IGRT for precise daily target localization. Most often multiple imaging modalities and RT objects claiming DICOM conformance are involved in the processes of planning and delivery of radiation therapy. DICOM incompatibility problems may arise from various sources. A DICOM CD-ROM, for instance, is often the form of imaging studies of outer community patients. It is not unusual that images on those CD-ROMs can not be viewed because of corrupt built-in viewers or some corrupt image data. Sometimes images on good CD-ROMs can not be transferred to treatment  planning workstations due to unsupported compression algorithms or the lack of a DICOM pusher. A missing or incompatible tag in the DICOM file, the inconsistent image dimension and so on can also make DICOM objects unreadable. For patients in the community, retrieving previous imaging studies for planning purposes can become laborious because of too much unwanted data or the absence of attending staff. DICOMan is meant to tackle all those DICOM discommodities. With this application at hand, treatment planning and delivery of radiation therapy procedures become feasible by elimination of the incompatibility problems. As the DICOM standard evolving and new imaging modalities emerging, DICOM incompatibility problems will continue to occur. A fast adaptive DICOM application like this is very helpful for clinicians to view the imaging studies, register and fuse the diagnostic imaging for radiation treatment planning purpose, and image-guidance for treatment delivery.

Who needs DICOMan?

All clinics and research laboratories that need to handle DICOM and DICOM RT objects are the possible users. It is especially useful for users in the fields of Radiation Oncology and Radiology.

Main Features of DICOMan

• The Viewer of High Performance for DICOM Images or Non-image Objects.

  This application was written in C++ from scratch. It was optimized in efficiency and graphical user interface (GUI) so that it best fits your clinical needs. Figure 1 shows the typical look of DICOMan, but its GUI was made flexible to be of easy use and eye-friendly. Images of multiple studies of one or more patients can be viewed simultaneously in multiple-image-window mode shown in Figure 1. Each image window can be maximized or even displayed in full-screen mode.  Changing window and level, zooming in/out and panning are right at your finger tip. The DICOM tree window on the left side organizes DICOM objects in exactly the way as stated in the DICOM standard. The drag-and-drop feature is implemented to make object selection as easy as snap.

  It supports non-image DICOM objects such as RT Structure Set, RT Dose and RT Plan. It also provides the users with a three-dimensional rendering engine (Figure 1).

• The DICOM Pusher.

DICOMan can push any selected DICOM objects to remote listening DICOM storage servers that declare the supports for mentioned DICOM objects (Figure 2).

Figure 2 The DICOM pusher.

• The DICOM Retriever.

When it is configured, it can find and retrieve seamlessly whatever imaging studies the user selected without extra junky data. When data transfer is completed, the fetched DICOM images will be automatically displayed. It works just like a terminal workstation of a commercial PACS without extra hardware investment (Figure 3).

Figure 3 The DICOM retriever.

• The DICOM Storage Server.

The multi-threading programming technology was used to maximize the performance. It runs unnoticeably at the background and can be easily turned on or off. Figure 5 shows the configuration module for the storage server when it is to be started.

Figure 4 The configuration module for DICOM the starting storage server.

• The comprehensive DICOM editor.

This is a powerful feature of DICOMan. It functions far more than common anonymization. In fact it is capable of editing all data elements. It also validates the conformance against the DICOM standard of the latest revision (coming soon).

• The Image Format Converter from DICOM to TIFF.

Many imaging applications in either clinics or research laboratories do not support DICOM format or need extra capital investment for DICOM interfacing module to read images. This format converter will take care of the image format hustle in a few clicks.

• AVI Movie Generator.

AVI is a common movie format. It is very well supported in the computer world. When a imaging study of multiple slices is converted to an AVI movie, it can be viewed on any computer or included in a presentation. To download a sample DICOM movie, please click on Figure 5.

Figure 5 A sample CT scan movie viewed in Windows Media Player.

• The DICOM composer for MicroPET.

This function is exclusively implemented to convert raw image data of MicroPET for small animals to DICOM so that MicroPET imaging studies can be readily viewed in either commercial DICOM viewers or in-house developed DICOM software. The DICOM files can be composed in either single frame or multi-frame scheme. Figure 6 shows a sample converted DICOM MicroPET study of a rabbit.

Figure 6 A sample MicroPET study of a rabbit.

• The DICOM packaging tool for Monte Carlo Simulation code EGS4.

This module is designed to export DICOM objects including imaging series and DICOM RT structure set in EGS4 phantom format. EGS4 is a software package for Monte Carlo simulation. This function is a result of inter-institutional collaboration with Yale University. The interested users are referred to Department of Therapeutic Radiology Yale University School of Medicine for Monte Carlo simulation codes.

Figure 7 A sample of EGS4 phantom attributes.

• Full support for DICOM RT objects (RT Image, RT Structure Set, RT Dose, RT Plan).

DICOMan is designed for medical imaging users with an emphasis on Radiation Oncology. DICOM RT objects are supported.

Download the Latest Version

DICOMan is constantly evolving. The users are advised to check our website periodically and have your systems upgraded in the latest version. The current version is 1.5, Build 318, April 23, 2008. To download self-extracting DICOMan software package, please click here.

Installation Steps

1. Create a directory as the home directory for DICOMan, “C:\Clinic\DICOMan” for instance.
2. Execute the self-extracting software package "DICOMan_package.exe" in the home directory of DICOMan.
3. Double click the executable “DICOMan.exe” and follow the prompts to get a license.

License Types

There are two kinds of licenses as follows,

1. Permanent license. That is what we strongly recommended. The user is provided with full unleashed functions plus free upgrades.
2. Temporary license. It is time-limited license ( 1 to 3 months). DICOMan functions exactly the same as the permanently licensed version as long as the license stays valid. Anyone who is interested in this product can request a time-limited license for temporary use. Limited number of free permanent licenses are to be issued to whoever are interested in R&D collaboration.

How to Contact Us?

For the license and technical support, please contact

 

Yulong Yan PhD
Tel: (501) 526 6591
Fax: (501) 686 7285
Email: YanYulong@uams.edu

or

Xuejun Weng PhD
Tel: (501) 526 7089
Fax: (501) 686 7285
Email: WengXuejun@uams.edu

For sales information, please contact

Dawn Bolt, MHSA
Tel: (501) 526 6157
Fax: (501) 686 7285
Email: BoltDawnM@uams.edu