It's easy to take compression for granted with the availability of cheap storage. Many of the common file formats used in many applications are intrinsically compressed as well, like JPEGs and PNGs. However, when you get into the Medical Imaging market and the prevalent DICOM file format, it is a very different ballgame. Like any good preschooler, you might be asking, "Why?".

Today, we uploaded a new setup with some fantastic new features and improvements to LEADTOOLS Version 19. With a heavy focus on Document and Medical technologies, some of these features are unprecedented for the commercial SDK marketplace. Also, some speed improvements are approaching the 10x faster mark! Here are some of the major updates to pique your interest:

• First Commercial DICOM Hanging Protocol SDK
• HTML5 Zero-footprint Medical Web Viewer - New Features and Enhancements
• DICOM Storage Server - New Features
• More Efficient Handling of DICOM Pixel Data
• Recognition SDK Technology - Enhancements to OCR, Forms & OMR, and New Composite Barcode Recognition
• Document Viewer - New Features and Enhancements
• Document Formats - Enhanced Support
• Credit Card Reader SDK - Supported on More Platforms

Let's continue our introduction of the upcoming updates to LEADTOOLS V19 Document and Medical technologies. These updates will include a market-first DICOM Hanging Protocol implementation as well as the fastest Forms Recognition and Processing engine in the world! Additionally, the upcoming update includes new features for the HTML5 Zero-footprint Medical Web Viewer, DICOM Storage Server, Recognition Engines, Document Viewer, Document Formats, Linux, and Credit Card Reader.

Today's post is about the new features coming to the LEADTOOLS DICOM Storage Server:

2017 is already shaping up to be a great year as LEADTOOLS has a lot of exciting features and enhancements to share. Today we're going to introduce to you some of the upcoming updates to LEADTOOLS V19 Document and Medical technologies that will continue to keep LEADTOOLS as the most comprehensive SDK in the market. These updates will include a market-first DICOM Hanging Protocol implementation as well as the fastest Form Recognition and Processing engine in the world! Additionally, the upcoming update includes new features for the HTML5 Zero-footprint Medical Web Viewer, DICOM Storage Server, Recognition Engines, Document Viewer, Document Formats, Linux, and Credit Card Reader.

More often than not, DICOM files are loaded from a location on disk due to the size and complexity of the files. However, no environment and scenario is the same and we periodically get requests regarding how to load DICOM files from memory, more specifically a byte[] rather than a Stream. Due to the way that .NET garbage collection works we must use a .NET GCHandle object when passing an IntPtr to the overloaded DicomDataSet.Load function.

private byte[] loadedFile; // byte array for DICOM file from database, server, etc.
private DicomDataSet dicomDS;
private DicomElement element;

// Pin object so it is not garbage collected before work is done.
GCHandle gch = GCHandle.Alloc(loadedFile);

// Load DicomDS from byte[] using IntPtr of array.
dicomDS.Load(Marshal.UnsafeAddrOfPinnedArrayElement(loadedFile, 0),
   loadedFile.Length, DicomDataSetFlags.None);

// Unpin object.
gch.Free();

// Get image from DicomDS.
element = dicomDS.FindFirstElement(null, DicomTag.PixelData, true);
rasterImageViewer1.Image = dicomDS.GetImage(element, 0, 0,
   Leadtools.RasterByteOrder.Gray, DicomGetImageFlags.None);

To download the entire C# example project for versions 17.5 and 18, check out this forum post.