What is a DICOM File?
The DICOM protocol is an arrangement created by the North American Radiological Association that provides a system to allow sharing of digital data between imaging equipment and workstations from the various different manufacturers. This means that the imaging data created by a CT scan from one manufacturer will be able to be read by the workstation of another manufacturer. Part 10 of the protocol relates to how the actual 2D slice data is represented. Each slice is represented as a separate DICOM file (.DCM) and this file contains a header within the file which contains the unique data of that slice in terms of the name of the patient, the time and details of the scan as well as this position of this slice being relative to the other slices plus a standard image file such as JPEG, TIFF or BITMAP. The scan from a patient may contain 100 or more of these separate DICOM files. The process of reading these files into a program into a TLA generator or a TLA viewer is aided if there is an a
