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DICOM Format

Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) is the standard for the communication and management of medical imaging information and related data. When the message format is DICOM, the format tab contains the DICOM Storage settings described below.

Enable storing DICOM Pixel Data in a separate folder

DICOM files can be very large and can have significant memory requirements in QIE. When this option is enabled, QIE extracts the pixel data from each DICOM instance as it is received and stores it, encrypted, in the folder specified by the DICOM Storage path below. All other DICOM attributes are processed through the channel as a small message. As the DICOM file is sent to another system or exported, the pixel data is read back from the separate folder and a complete DICOM file is produced again.

Warning

Without this option, the entire DICOM instance (pixel data included) is held in memory while the message is processed. Channels that can receive large images should always enable it. See Handling Large DICOM Images for the memory limits that apply and the scripting patterns for very large instances.

The option is honored by the receivers that read complete DICOM objects:

Other source types (for example FTP or Network Share) do not extract pixel data even when this option is checked.

Scripts can check whether a message's pixel data is stored separately, and how large it is, with the message.isPixelDataStoredSeparately() and message.getSeparatePixelDataLength() functions. See the Code Wizard.

DICOM Storage

The folder where the extracted pixel data is stored. This field is required when Enable storing DICOM Pixel Data in a separate folder is checked, the channel cannot be saved without it. The path accepts node tags such as system variables ({v:VariableName}) and channel cache values ({cc:VariableName}).

The Test button resolves any node tags in the path and verifies that QIE can access the folder.

Note

The DICOM Storage path must be on a volume with enough free space for the pixel data of all in-flight messages.

Create directory if it does not exist

When this option is checked, QIE creates the DICOM Storage folder (including any missing parent directories) when pixel data is first stored, instead of raising an error when the folder does not exist.