Combining two radiographs into one

[Chris Clarke]

Dear all

Does anyone know how to combine two radiographs (separate series) into one DICOM image with the two radiographs side-by-side in Horos?

Chris

[Mark Thurston]

Hi Chris

Have you tried changing the DICOM tag "Series Instance UID" (0020,000E) in one of the studies so that they both match?

Best wishes

Mark

[Chris Clarke]

Hi Mark

Thanks yes this is correct. I'm more looking to convert two separate DICOM images into one single DICOM image (without using Photoshop). Is this possible in Horos?

Chris

[Mark Thurston]

Hi Chris

As far as I'm aware, Horos is designed for viewing images so edits like this are not possible.

If you're looking to try to do this for a large batch of images, you could script the combination using a combination of `dcmtk` and `imagemagick`:

https://superuser.com/questions/290656/combine-multiple-images-using-imagemagick

However, if you just want to do this on a one off, you are going to need to manually edit the image data (probably as a JPEG), then convert it back to DICOM using something like dcmtk.

Sorry this isn't much help.

Best wishes

Mark

[Chris Clarke]

Thanks, very helpful advice.

Regards

Chris

[Grant Mitchell]

Hi

This is possible in Horos by doing the following

First you need to display the two desired images side by side in the viewer 

Then go to the file menu, export and select export to dicom files

A new window will appear and you need to ensure 'Include all displayed 2d viewers'  is  checked and choose a name for your new series before exporting

Upon export a new image will be created as an additional series in the current study. This will have your images side by side as a new single dicom image.

This function acts more like a screen grab than by merging the original dicom data so will affect the greyscale, resolution and subtle image detail when windowing, compared to the original images. This would be fine for illustrative or educational purposes though. One benefit is you can zoom, pan, rotate and re-window the two images before capture and these changes will be saved in your new single image series!

Hope this is what you were after

Many thanks

Grant   

[Chris Clarke]

Thanks thats really helpful. Unfortunately I think the detail lost would be too much for what I intend it to be used for (on a DICOM viewer), particularly with windiwing etc. I'm avoiding JPEGs for the same reason.  

I appreciate your explanation and 'm sure this would be useful e.g. for presentations etc.

Many thanks

Chris