how to spatially order files in a dicom data sequence?

Question

Do the filenames associated with a DICOM image series (from a single scan) match the spatial ordering? What I mean is if the patient was scanned “head first” is 000000.dcm more “superior” than 000001.dcm which is more superior than 000003.dcm etc? If the answer is no, how is spatial ordering established?

This isn't a programming question really. DICOM is a digital imaging standard — jordaniac89, Oct 12 '16 at 21:33
@jordaniac89 so what? JPEG is an image serialization standard. Can you count the questions on it at SO? — Ofek Shilon, Oct 13 '16 at 07:12

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 12 '16 at 21:44

2

No, the file names are rarely associated with the spatial ordering.

The best thing to use is the image position (patient) (0020,0032) and image orientation (patient) (0020,0037) values to get the geometry of each image. From there, you can "order" things how you wish, spatially.

answered Oct 12 '16 at 21:44

cneller

1,542
1
15
24

Are those 2 tags sufficient? What about slice location (0020,1041) Instance Number (0020,0013) and Patient Position (0018, 5100). I will be reading data from multiple scanners. – user762098 Oct 12 '16 at 22:00