DICOM fields

In which we pick out some interesting fields in the DICOM header.

We’re getting the information mainly from the standard DICOM object definitions

We won’t talk about the orientation, patient position-type fields here because we’ve covered those somewhat in DICOM voxel to patient coordinate system mapping.

Fields for ordering DICOM files into images

You’ll see some discussion of this in SPM DICOM conversion.

Section 7.3.1: general series module

  • Modality (0008,0060) - Type of equipment that originally acquired the data used to create the images in this Series. See C.7.3.1.1.1 for Defined Terms.

  • Series Instance UID (0020,000E) - Unique identifier of the Series.

  • Series Number (0020,0011) - A number that identifies this Series.

  • Series Time (0008,0031) - Time the Series started.

Section C.7.6.1:

  • Instance Number (0020,0013) - A number that identifies this image.

  • Acquisition Number (0020,0012) - A number identifying the single continuous gathering of data over a period of time that resulted in this image.

  • Acquisition Time (0008,0032) - The time the acquisition of data that resulted in this image started

Section C.7.6.2.1.2:

Slice Location (0020,1041) is defined as the relative position of the image plane expressed in mm. This information is relative to an unspecified implementation specific reference point.

Section C.8.3.1 MR Image Module

  • Slice Thickness (0018,0050) - Nominal reconstructed slice thickness, in mm.

Section C.8.3.1 MR Image Module

  • Spacing Between Slices (0018,0088) - Spacing between slices, in mm. The spacing is measured from the center-tocenter of each slice.

  • Temporal Position Identifier (0020,0100) - Temporal order of a dynamic or functional set of Images.

  • Number of Temporal Positions (0020,0105) - Total number of temporal positions prescribed.

  • Temporal Resolution (0020,0110) - Time delta between Images in a dynamic or functional set of images

Multi-frame images

An image for which the pixel data is a continuous stream of sequential frames.

Section C.7.6.6: Multi-Frame Module

  • Number of Frames (0028,0008) - Number of frames in a Multi-frame Image.

  • Frame Increment Pointer (0028,0009) - Contains the Data Element Tag of the attribute that is used as the frame increment in Multi-frame pixel data.