DICOM Format (DIC)

DICOM (DIC) files are commonly used in medical images.

LEADTOOLS reads a broad range of DICOM formats, converting them to LEAD-supported bits-per-pixel as necessary. Read Support is provided in all toolkits. Full support for this file format is available in the Medical Imaging toolkits.

LEADTOOLS writes DICOM files in the LEAD-supported bits-per-pixel. DICOM files can contain many comment fields of various types. Use the L_ReadFileComment function to read comments in an existing file. Before writing a file, use the L_SetComment function to create an array of comments to be saved in the file. Use the L_DeleteComment function to delete a comment field from a file.

You can read DICOM files as follows:

• Grayscale files in the 1- to 16-bit range are loaded as they are in the original file.
• Palettized color files in the 1- to 16-bit range are converted to 8-bit palettized or 24-bit unpalettized. By default, they are converted to 24-bit only if the palette contains more than 256 colors.
• Unpalettized color files (RGB, ARGB, or CMYK) with 1 to 16 bits per plane are converted to 24-bit RGB.
• Read multipage DICOM files by setting the page number in LOADFILEOPTION.

You can write DICOM files as 8, 12, or 16-bit grayscale, 8-bit palettized color, or 24-bit RGB color (8 bits per plane).

The file constants associated with this file format are:

Required DLLs and Libraries

• LTDIC.
• For a listing of the exact DLLs needed, based on the toolkit version, refer to Files To Be Included With Your Application.

Related Formats

• EXIF - Exif Formats
• JPG - JPEG Compressed
• JP2 - JPEG 2000 Compressed
• TIFF - Tagged Image File Format