Tips and Tricks on Basic Programming Tools for Radiologists to Handle DICOM Data

TEACHING POINTS

In the era of artificial intelligence, it is beneficial for radiologists to learn some basic programming tools to organise and curate DICOM data.
There are numerous user-friendly simple tools available, that can be used in their clinical and research practice.
DCM4CHE and DCMTK are open-source tools that can be used for the following:
- a. Extracting images from PACS systems, using filters like study date, modalityetc.
- b. Data sorting, Data modification and analysis.
- c. Converting Dicom (DCM) images to Jpeg or Pdf.
- d. Transferring Data to PACS or any other viewer.
Python is one of the easier programming languages which a radiologist, without much programming background, can learn and start using for manipulating DICOM data. Some python modules to use radiology are:
- a. Pydicom
- b. Matplotlib
- c. Pynetdicom3
- d. tqdm