# dcm2nii algorithms¶

dcm2nii is an open source DICOM to nifti conversion program, written by Chris Rorden, in Delphi (object orientated pascal). It’s part of Chris’ popular mricron collection of programs. The source appears to be best found on the mricron NITRC site. It’s BSD licensed.

These are working notes looking at Chris’ algorithms for working with DICOM.

## Compiling dcm2nii¶

Follow the download / install instructions at the http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/ site. I was on a Mac, and folowed the instructions here: http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Installing_Lazarus_on_MacOS_X . Default build with version 0.9.28.2 gave an error linking against Carbon, so I needed to download a snapshot of fixed Lazarus 0.9.28.3 from http://www.hu.freepascal.org/lazarus . Open <mricron>/dcm2nii/dcm2nii.lpi using the Lazarus GUI. Follow instructions for compiler setup in the mricron Readme.txt; in particular I set other compiler options to:

-k-macosx_version_min -k10.5
-XR/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.5.sdk/


Further inspiration for building also came from the debian/rules file in Michael Hanke’s mricron debian package: http://neuro.debian.net/debian/pool/main/m/mricron/

## Some tag modifications¶

Note - Chris tells me that dicomfastread.pas was an attempt to do a fast dicom read that is not yet fully compatible, and that the algorithm used is in fact dicomcompat.pas.

Looking in the source file <mricron>/dcm2nii/dicomfastread.pas.

Named fields here are as from DICOM fields

• If ‘MOSAIC’ is the last string in ‘ImageType’, this is a mosaic

• ‘DateTime’ field is combination of ‘StudyDate’ and ‘StudyTime’; fixes in file dicomtypes.pas for different scanner date / time formats.

• AcquisitionNumber read as normal, but then set to 1, if this a mosaic image, as set above.

• If ‘EchoNumbers’ > 0 and < 16, add ‘EchoNumber’ * 100 to the ‘AcquisitionNumber’ - presumably to identify different echos from the same series as being different series.

• If ‘ScanningSequence’ sequence contains ‘RM’, add 100 to the ‘SeriesNumber’ - maybe to differentiate research and not-research scans with the same acquisition number.

• is_4D flag labeling DICOM file as a 4D file:

• There’s a Philips private tag (2001, 1018) - labeled ‘Number of Slices MR’ by pydicom call this NS

• If NS>0 and ‘NumberofTemporalPositions’ > 0, and ‘NumberOfFrames’ is > 1

## Sorting slices into volumes¶

Looking in the source file <mricron>/dcm2nii/sortdicom.pas.

In function ShellSortDCM:

Sort compares two dicom images, call them dcm1 and dcm2. Tests are:

1. Are the two images ‘repeats’ - defined by same ‘InstanceNumber’ (0020, 0013), and ‘AcquisitionNumber’ (0020, 0012) and ‘SeriesNumber’ (0020, 0011) and a combination of ‘StudyDate’ and ‘StudyTime’)? Then report an error about files having the same index, flag repeated values.

2. Is dcm1 less than dcm2, defined with comparisons in the following order:

1. StudyDate/Time

2. SeriesNumber

3. AcquisitionNumber

4. InstanceNumber

This should obviously only ever be > or <, not ==, because of the first check.

Next remove repeated values as found in the first step above.