How i can extract PIXEL from DICOM file?

Question

I want to write a script to extract the PixelDATA of a DICOM file using c or c ++, I don't want to use external libraries like dicomsdl... if anyone can help me to write algorithm for extract and show image .

Answer 1

Just extracting the image data under the pixel data is not enough to interpret the DICOM image properly. You will need other attributes from DICOM file such as Rows, Columns, Bit Allocated, Bit Stored, High Bit, Photometric Interpretation, Sample Per Pixel to Number of Frames information just to interpret the raw uncompressed image data. Also, stored image data can be in Little Endian or Big Endian byte order. In addition, image data can be encapsulated or compressed (e.g. compressed using different compression algorithms such as JPEG, JPEG 2000, JPEG LS, RLE etc)) and compressed streams are stored differently than the uncompressed image data. Even the PixelData element can exist in multiple locations in a single DICOM file (e.g. one under the Icon Image Sequence (thumbnail) and one at the top level (actual image).

It can get more complicated when you need to account for Palette Color (segmented vs un-segmented), modality LUT, VOI LUT etc. My recommendation is to use an existing DICOM SDK and there are many open source and commercial SDK available for different platforms and programming environments.