Method for increasing the flexibility of DICOM tags management in application-specific integration

1 . A method of importing an image from an image file, comprising the steps of:

reading an image data portion and a header portion from the image file;

retrieving essential tag names from a table; and

upon verifying that the header portion includes all of the essential tag names, retrieving the image from the image data portion.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the image file is of a DICOM format.

3 . The method of claim 2 , wherein the retrieving of the image only occurs when a DICOM preamble and DICM prefix are present within the header portion.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the table is stored within a tag initialization file.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the table includes optional tag names and corresponding optional tag values.

6 . The method of claim 1 , further comprises the steps of:

retrieving image tag values from the header portion that each correspond to the essential tag names;

upon determining that all of the essential tag names are present within an image volume, retrieving volume tag values from the image volume which correspond to the essential tag names; and

adding the image to the image volume when each of the image tag values matches with one of the volume tag values.

7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the image volume is of the DICOM format.

8 . The method of claim 6 , further comprising exporting the image volume to a format that is native to an imaging device.

9 . A computer readable medium having program instructions thereto for implementing the method claim in claim 1 when executed in a digital processing device.

10 . A computer readable medium including computer code for importing an image of an image file, the computer readable medium comprising:

computer code for reading an image data portion and a header portion from the image file;

computer code for retrieving essential tag names from a table; and

computer code that retrieves the image from the image data portion after verifying that the header portion includes all of the essential tag names.

11 . The computer readable medium of claim 12 , wherein the image file is of a DICOM format.

12 . The computer readable medium of claim 11 , wherein the table is stored within a tag initialization file.

13 . The computer readable medium of claim 11 , further comprising:

computer code for retrieving image tag values from the header portion that each correspond to the essential tag names;

computer code that upon determining that all of the essential tag names are present within an image volume, retrieves volume tag values from the image volume which correspond to the essential tag names; and

computer code for adding the image to the image volume when each of the image tag values matches with one of the volume tag values.

14 . A method for collating images into a image volume comprising the steps of:

retrieving a set of volume identifiers and a corresponding set of volume identifier values from a map;

when it is determined that the set of volume identifiers are present within a first image and a second image, retrieving a first set of volume identifier values from the first image and a second set of volume identifier values from the second image, wherein the first set of volume identifier values and the second set of volume identifier values each correspond to the volume identifiers; and

collating the first image and the second image into the image volume when each of the first set of volume identifier values matches one of the second set of volume identifier values.

15 . The method of claim 14 , wherein the first image file and the second image file are each of a DICOM format.

16 . The method of claim 14 , wherein the map is stored within an initialization file.