DICOM Node Path Syntax

DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) is the standard for storing and exchanging medical imaging information. Every piece of information in a DICOM message is identified by a unique tag composed of two parts: a 4-character hexadecimal Group number representing a broad category of information (e.g. Patient Information, Study Information, Image Pixel Data), and a 4-character hexadecimal Element number identifying the specific data element within that group. The standard DICOM notation for a tag is (Group,Element), for example, (0010,0020) for Patient ID.

In QIE, a DICOM tag is referenced as a node path in the form {Group},{Element} with an optional leading forward slash and no parentheses (e.g. 0010,0020 or /0010,0020). The ? character may be used as a wildcard for any hexadecimal digit; for example, 00??,0100 matches any tag whose Group starts with 00 and Element is 0100.

Node paths in this section can be used with getNode, getAllNodes, and other QIE functions that accept a nodePath parameter. See How Node Paths Resolve for behavior details and the Node Path Lookup Dialog to build and validate them interactively against a sample message.

Example:

var patientId = source.getNode('/0010,0020');

Commonly Referenced Tags

Category	Tag	Description
Patient Information	0010,0010	Patient's Name
	0010,0020	Patient ID
	0010,0030	Patient's Birth Date
	0010,0040	Patient's Sex
Study Information	0008,0020	Study Date
	0008,0030	Study Time
	0008,0050	Accession Number
	0008,0090	Referring Physician's Name
	0008,1030	Study Description
Series Information	0020,000e	Series Instance UID
	0020,0011	Series Number
	0020,1040	Position Reference Indicator
Image Information	0028,0002	Samples per Pixel
	0028,0004	Photometric Interpretation
	0028,0010	Rows
	0028,0011	Columns
	0028,0100	Bits Allocated
	0028,0101	Bits Stored
	0028,0102	High Bit
	0028,0103	Pixel Representation
Modality Specific	0018,0060	KVP (for X-ray)
	0018,0080	Repetition Time (for MRI)
	0018,0081	Echo Time (for MRI)

The full DICOM Dictionary of Tags, UIDs, Command Field Codes, and Status Codes is accessible within QIE from the Custom Script's View -> DICOM Codes menu, or with the Shift + F4 hot key from the Custom Script window.

Filter Operators and Predicates

DICOM node paths support the same predicate functions (contains, starts-with, ends-with, equals) as HL7 HPath. See Filter Operators and Predicates under the HL7 section for full descriptions and function signatures. The optional caseSensitive argument defaults to false (case-insensitive).