#+title: dicom.el - DICOM viewer - Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine
#+author: Daniel Mendler
#+language: en
#+export_file_name: dicom.texi
#+texinfo_dir_category: Emacs misc features
#+texinfo_dir_title: DICOM viewer: (dicom).
#+texinfo_dir_desc: Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine.

#+html: <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/"><img alt="GNU Emacs" src="https://github.com/minad/corfu/blob/screenshots/emacs.svg?raw=true"/></a>
#+html: <a href="https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/dicom.html"><img alt="GNU ELPA" src="https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/dicom.svg"/></a>
#+html: <a href="https://elpa.gnu.org/devel/dicom.html"><img alt="GNU-devel ELPA" src="https://elpa.gnu.org/devel/dicom.svg"/></a>
#+html: <a href="https://releases.melpa.org/#/dicom"><img alt="MELPA Releases" src="https://releases.melpa.org/packages/dicom-badge.svg"/></a>
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DICOM stands for Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine. DICOM files are
typically used for medical imaging with different modalities like US, CR, CT,
MRI or PET. This package adds the ability to view such files in Emacs. The
images and metadata are displayed in regular Emacs buffers. The package
registers itself in ~auto-mode-alist~ and ~magic-mode-alist~ for ~DICOMDIR~ directory
files and DICOM images (file extension ~*.dcm~ or ~*.ima~). Furthermore the command
~dicom-open~ opens ~DICOMDIR~ directory files or DICOM image files interactively.

#+html: <img src="https://github.com/minad/dicom/blob/screenshots/screenshot.png?raw=true">

* Installation

Dicom.el is available from [[https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/dicom.html][ELPA]] or [[https://releases.melpa.org/#/dicom][MELPA]] and can be installed via ~M-x package-install RET dicom RET~.
After installation, you can open ~DICOMDIR~ and DICOM image files.

Emacs must be compiled with support for PNG, SVG and XML. The package relies on
external programs from the [[https://dcmtk.org/en/dcmtk/][DCMTK]] DICOM toolkit, which is widely available on
Linux distributions. Some other programs are used as optional fallbacks.

- ~dcm2xml~ and ~dcm2img~ from the [[https://dcmtk.org/en/dcmtk/][DCMTK]] DICOM toolkit
- ~magick~ from [[https://imagemagick.org/][ImageMagick]] (optional fallback)
- ~gdcmconv~ from [[https://sourceforge.net/projects/gdcm/][Grassroots DICOM]] (optional fallback)
- ~ffmpeg~ for video conversion (optional for video)
- ~mpv~ for video playing (optional for video)

* Supported files

The DICOM format is quite diverse. The ~dcm2xml~ tool can read the metadata of
most uncorrupted DICOM files. It can still happen that the DICOM viewer is
unable to display files, if the metadata records are not interpreted properly.
Furthermore the DICOM format supports a variety of underlying image formats and
compressions, which might not be supported by the [[https://github.com/minad/dicom/blob/main/dicom-convert.sh][dicom-convert.sh]] shell script.
Help improving the package is very welcome!
