tractor.base (version 1.1.0)

DicomMetadata: Class representing metadata extracted from a DICOM header

Description

This class represents DICOM metadata, which typically contains detailed information about the scan parameters and subject. Only DICOM files from magnetic resonance scanners are supported.

Usage

newDicomMetadataFromFile(fileName, checkFormat = TRUE)
isDicomMetadata(object)
## S3 method for class 'metadata.dicom':
print(x, descriptions = FALSE, ...)

Arguments

fileName

The name of a DICOM file.

checkFormat

If TRUE, the function will check for the magic string "DICM" at byte offset 128. This string should be present, but in reality not all files contain it.

object

Any object.

x

Object of class metadata.dicom.

descriptions

Logical value: should tag descriptions be given? Numeric tag numbers are printed if this is FALSE (the default).

...

Further options to print (though none are supported for this type of object).

Value

• newDicomMetadataFromFile returns a DicomMetadata object, or NULL on failure. isDicomMetadata returns TRUE if object is a DicomMetadata object. print.metadata.dicom is only called for its side-effect. A DicomMetadata object is a list object (see list.object) with class c("metadata.dicom", "list.object", "list") and the following function elements.
• getAvailableTags()
  Retrieve a list of lists representing all available tags. Each element of the outer list has identifying elements "group" and "element". See the DICOM standard for more information.
• getDataLength()
  Retrieve the length of the data part of the DICOM file in bytes.
• getDataOffset()
  Retrieve the byte offset of the data in the DICOM file.
• getEndianness()
  Retrieve the endianness of the file: "big" or "little".
• getSource()
  Retrieve the name of the source file.
• getTagOffset()
  Retrieve the byte offset of useful tags in the file.
• getTagValue(group, element)
  Retrieve the value of the tag with specified group and element numbers, usually given in hex.
• nTags()
  Retrieve the number of tags stored in this object.

Details

Tag descriptions and types are read from the DICOM dictionary.

See Also

The DICOM standard, found online at http://medical.nema.org/. (Warning: may produce headaches!) Also dictionary, and newMriImageFromDicom for information on how to create MriImage objects from DICOM files.