dcm2xml - Man Page

  -h    --help
          print this help text and exit

        --version
          print version information and exit

        --arguments
          print expanded command line arguments

  -q    --quiet
          quiet mode, print no warnings and errors

  -v    --verbose
          verbose mode, print processing details

  -d    --debug
          debug mode, print debug information

  -ll   --log-level  [l]evel: string constant
          (fatal, error, warn, info, debug, trace)
          use level l for the logger

  -lc   --log-config  [f]ilename: string
          use config file f for the logger

input file format:

  +f    --read-file
          read file format or data set (default)

  +fo   --read-file-only
          read file format only

  -f    --read-dataset
          read data set without file meta information

input transfer syntax:

  -t=   --read-xfer-auto
          use TS recognition (default)

  -td   --read-xfer-detect
          ignore TS specified in the file meta header

  -te   --read-xfer-little
          read with explicit VR little endian TS

  -tb   --read-xfer-big
          read with explicit VR big endian TS

  -ti   --read-xfer-implicit
          read with implicit VR little endian TS

long tag values:

  +M    --load-all
          load very long tag values (e.g. pixel data)

  -M    --load-short
          do not load very long values (default)

  +R    --max-read-length  [k]bytes: integer (4..4194302, default: 4)
          set threshold for long values to k kbytes

specific character set:

  +Cr   --charset-require
          require declaration of extended charset (default)

  +Ca   --charset-assume  [c]harset: string
          assume charset c if no extended charset declared

  +Cc   --charset-check-all
          check all data elements with string values
          (default: only PN, LO, LT, SH, ST, UC and UT)

          # this option is only used for the mapping to an appropriate
          # XML character encoding, but not for the conversion to UTF-8

  +U8   --convert-to-utf8
          convert all element values that are affected
          by Specific Character Set (0008,0005) to UTF-8

          # requires support from an underlying character encoding library
          # (see output of --version on which one is available)

general XML format:

  -dtk  --dcmtk-format
          output in DCMTK-specific format (default)

  -nat  --native-format
          output in Native DICOM Model format (part 19)

  +Xn   --use-xml-namespace
          add XML namespace declaration to root element

DCMTK-specific format (not with --native-format):

  +Xd   --add-dtd-reference
          add reference to document type definition (DTD)

  +Xe   --embed-dtd-content
          embed document type definition into XML document

  +Xf   --use-dtd-file  [f]ilename: string
          use specified DTD file (only with +Xe)
          (default: /usr/local/share/dcmtk/dcm2xml.dtd)

  +Wn   --write-element-name
          write name of the DICOM data elements (default)

  -Wn   --no-element-name
          do not write name of the DICOM data elements

  +Wb   --write-binary-data
          write binary data of OB and OW elements
          (default: off, be careful with --load-all)

encoding of binary data:

  +Eh   --encode-hex
          encode binary data as hex numbers
          (default for DCMTK-specific format)

  +Eu   --encode-uuid
          encode binary data as a UUID reference
          (default for Native DICOM Model)

  +Eb   --encode-base64
          encode binary data as Base64 (RFC 2045, MIME)

Attributes with very large value fields (e.g. pixel data) are not loaded by default. They can be identified by the additional attribute 'loaded' with a value of 'no' (see example above). The command line option --load-all forces to load all value fields including the very long ones.

Furthermore, binary data of OB and OW attributes are not written to the XML output file by default. These elements can be identified by the additional attribute 'binary' with a value of 'hidden' (default is 'no'). The command line option --write-binary-data causes also binary value fields to be printed (attribute value is 'yes' or 'base64'). But, be careful when using this option together with --load-all because of the large amounts of pixel data that might be printed to the output. Please note that in this context element values with a VR of OD, OF, OL and OV are not regarded as 'binary data'.

Multiple values (i.e. where the DICOM value multiplicity is greater than 1) are separated by a backslash '\' (except for Base64 encoded data). The 'len' attribute indicates the number of bytes for the particular value field as stored in the DICOM data set, i.e. it might deviate from the XML encoded value length e.g. because of non-significant padding that has been removed. If this attribute is missing in 'sequence' or 'item' start tags, the corresponding DICOM element has been stored with undefined length.

Binary data, i.e. DICOM element values with Value Representations (VR) of OB or OW, as well as OD, OF, OL, OV and UN values are by default not written to the XML output because of their size. Instead, for each element, a new Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) is being generated and written as an attribute of a <BulkData> XML element. So far, there is no possibility to write an additional file to hold the binary data for each of the binary data chunks. This is not required by the standard, however, it might be useful for implementing an Application Hosting interface; thus this feature may be available in future versions of dcm2xml.

In addition, Supplement 163 (Store Over the Web by Representational State Transfer Services) introduces a new <InlineBinary> XML element that allows for encoding binary data as Base64. Currently, the command line option --encode-base64 enables this encoding for the following VRs: OB, OD, OF, OL, OV, OW and UN.

In addition to what is written in the above section on 'Bulk Data', there are further known issues with the current implementation of the Native DICOM Model format. For example, large element values with a VR other than OB, OD, OF, OL, OV, OW or UN are currently never written as bulk data, although it might be useful, e.g. for very long text elements (especially UT) or very long numeric fields (of various VRs).

The XML encoding is determined automatically from the DICOM attribute (0008,0005) 'Specific Character Set' using the following mapping:

ASCII         (ISO_IR 6)    =>  "UTF-8"
UTF-8         "ISO_IR 192"  =>  "UTF-8"
ISO Latin 1   "ISO_IR 100"  =>  "ISO-8859-1"
ISO Latin 2   "ISO_IR 101"  =>  "ISO-8859-2"
ISO Latin 3   "ISO_IR 109"  =>  "ISO-8859-3"
ISO Latin 4   "ISO_IR 110"  =>  "ISO-8859-4"
ISO Latin 5   "ISO_IR 148"  =>  "ISO-8859-9"
Cyrillic      "ISO_IR 144"  =>  "ISO-8859-5"
Arabic        "ISO_IR 127"  =>  "ISO-8859-6"
Greek         "ISO_IR 126"  =>  "ISO-8859-7"
Hebrew        "ISO_IR 138"  =>  "ISO-8859-8"

If this DICOM attribute is missing in the input file, although needed, option --charset-assume can be used to specify an appropriate character set manually (using one of the DICOM defined terms). For reasons of backward compatibility with previous versions of this tool, the following terms are also supported and mapped automatically to the associated DICOM defined terms: latin-1, latin-2, latin-3, latin-4, latin-5, cyrillic, arabic, greek, hebrew.

Multiple character sets using code extension techniques are not supported. If needed, option --convert-to-utf8 can be used to convert the DICOM file or data set to UTF-8 encoding prior to the conversion to XML format. This is also useful for DICOMDIR files where each directory record can have a different character set.

If no mapping is defined and option --convert-to-utf8 is not used, non-ASCII characters and those below #32 are stored as '&#nnn;' where 'nnn' refers to the numeric character code. This might lead to invalid character entity references (such as '&#27;' for ESC) and will cause most XML parsers to reject the document.