dcmrt: a radiation therapy library and utility apps

This module contains classes to read, write, create, modify and access various DICOM Radiation Therapy (RT) objects. These classes are generated automatically from the official DocBook/XML version of the DICOM standard.

The main interface classes are:

• DRTDoseIOD
• DRTImageIOD
• DRTPlanIOD
• DRTStructureSetIOD
• DRTTreatmentSummaryRecordIOD
• DRTIonPlanIOD
• DRTIonBeamsTreatmentRecordIOD

To simplify working with this low-level interface, there are some hand-written classes which provide commonly needed functionality.

These classes are:

• DRTDose
• DRTImage
• DRTPlan
• DRTStructureSet

Tools

This module contains the following command line tools:

• drtdump: Dump DICOM RT file and data set

Examples

The following example shows how to load an RT Dose file and output the patient's name:

DcmFileFormat fileformat;
OFCondition status = fileformat.loadFile("rtdose.dcm");
if (status.good())
{
  DRTDoseIOD rtdose;
  status = rtdose.read(*fileformat.getDataset());
  if (status.good())
  {
    OFString patientName;
    status = rtdose.getPatientName(patientName);
    if (status.good())
    {
      cout << "Patient's Name: " << patientName << endl;
    } else
      cerr << "Error: cannot access Patient's Name (" << status.text() << ")" << endl;
  } else
    cerr << "Error: cannot read RT Dose object (" << status.text() << ")" << endl;
} else
  cerr << "Error: cannot load DICOM file (" << status.text() << ")" << endl;

The following example shows how to load an RT Dose file and access the scaled dose image:

DRTDose rtdose;
OFCondition status = rtdose.loadFile("rtdose.dcm");
if (status.good())
{
  const unsigned int frame = 0;
  OFVector<double> doseImage;
  status = rtdose.getDoseImage(doseImage, frame);
  if (status.good())
  {
    OFVector<double>::iterator it = doseImage.begin();
    for (int y = 0; y < doseImage.getDoseImageHeight(); ++y)
    {
      for (int x = 0; x < doseImage.getDoseImageWidth(); ++x)
      {
        double value = *it++;
        /* do something useful with the dose image pixel */
      }
    }
  } else
    cerr << "Error: cannot read RT Dose image (" << status.text() << ")" << endl;
} else
  cerr << "Error: cannot load RT Dose object (" << status.text() << ")" << endl;

The following example shows how to load an RT Plan file, change the patient's name and save it to a new file:

DcmFileFormat fileformat;
OFCondition status = fileformat.loadFile("rtplan.dcm");
if (status.good())
{
  DRTPlanIOD rtplan;
  status = rtplan.read(*fileformat.getDataset());
  if (status.good())
  {
    status = rtplan.setPatientName("Doe^John");
    if (status.good())
    {
      fileformat.clear();
      status = rtplan.write(*fileformat.getDataset());
      if (status.good())
      {
        status = fileformat.saveFile("rtplan_new.dcm");
        if (status.bad())
          cerr << "Error: cannot save DICOM file (" << status.text() << ")" << endl;
      } else
        cerr << "Error: cannot write RT Plan object (" << status.text() << ")" << endl;
    } else
      cerr << "Error: cannot change Patient's Name (" << status.text() << ")" << endl;
  } else
    cerr << "Error: cannot read RT Plan object (" << status.text() << ")" << endl;
} else
  cerr << "Error: cannot load DICOM file (" << status.text() << ")" << endl;

Known Issues

Since most of the classes in this module are generated automatically from a machine-readable version of the DICOM standard and the RT objects are known to "re-use" the same sequence attributes with different content at various places, there still might be some issues with wrong definitions in a few sub-sequences. E.g., the Referenced Beam Sequence (300C,0004) and the Referenced SOP Sequence (0008,1199) are candidates that might not be handled 100% correctly yet.