DICOM Basics (WIP)

Reading

Articles that provide an introduction to DICOM:

Exercises

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Exercise 1

What is the difference between a Series and a Study?

Answer

TODO: write an answer

Exercise 2

What is the difference between a transfer syntax that has implicit value representation (VR) vs. explicit VR? If you are writing software that imports DICOM files, how will you handle explicit VRs vs implicit VRs?

Answer

A VR is like the data type—double, int, char, string. If a transfer syntax has implicit VRs, then it assumes your application can deduce the VR from the tag. To do this, you will need an up-to-date data dictionary that can handle the lookups. Of course, this can be problematic when working with private tags (also, occassionally the standard adds new tags).

Transfer syntaxes that use an explicit VR will include the VR along with the data. This means you will know the VR without needing a data dictionary.

TODO: check that this answer is using DICOM terms correctly; complete this answer

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