dcmpschk(1)

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version 3.7.1 · 10 versions
, in arch rolling

💅 dcmpschk(1) — the OFFIS DCMTK girlies present…

okay so bestie, welcome to dcmpschk, straight out of the OFFIS DCMTK family 🎀 this is the checking tool for presentation states and she is thorough.

✨ NAME ✨

dcmpschk — checking tool for presentation states 🦋

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

dcmpschk [options] [dcmfile-in...]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so dcmpschk checks DICOM Grayscale Softcopy Presentation State objects for conformance with the standard. like, she's the vibe check but for your files 💅 and she does the test in three phases:

  • Phase 1 checks the Meta-header of the DICOM file. it's tested whether all required attributes are present, whether the SOP class and instance UIDs match the UIDs in the main object, and whether the group length attribute contains a correct value. the Transfer Syntax of the Meta header is also checked ✨
  • Phase 2 performs a syntactic check of the values, value representations and value multiplicities for each attribute in the object. the values present in the object under test are compared with the definitions of the DICOM data dictionary 📖
  • Phase 3 performs a semantic check of the integrity of the Presentation State. this phase is omitted when objects of other SOP Classes are encountered 👀 Phase 1 and 2 can also be applied to other DICOM objects of arbitrary SOP class.
ngl there's one thing you gotta know: dcmpschk does not support Presentation States which contain the Mask Module 😭 those will be rejected with a message that the Mask Module is not supported. periodt.

🎀 PARAMETERS 🎀

  • dcmfile-in — presentation state file(s) to be checked 🗂️

✨ OPTIONS ✨

general options 💫

  • -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

validation options 🔍

  • --validate-std — images referenced by GSPS must belong to the same SOP class (default)
  • --validate-related — images referenced by GSPS may belong to related 'for presentation' and 'for processing' SOP class
  • --validate-relaxed — images referenced by GSPS may be any SOP class, she's chill like that 💜

🌈 LOGGING 🌈

okay so the level of logging output of the various command line tools and underlying libraries can be specified by the user, iconic behavior honestly 👑

by default, only errors and warnings are written to the standard error stream. using option --verbose also informational messages like processing details are reported. option --debug can be used to get more details on the internal activity, e.g. for debugging purposes. other logging levels can be selected using option --log-level. in --quiet mode only fatal errors are reported — and in such very severe error events, the application will usually terminate 💀 for more details on the different logging levels, see documentation of module "oflog".

in case the logging output should be written to file (optionally with logfile rotation), to syslog (Unix) or the event log (Windows) option --log-config can be used. this configuration file also allows for directing only certain messages to a particular output stream and for filtering certain messages based on the module or application where they are generated 🌊 an example configuration file is provided in <etcdir>/logger.cfg.

🫶 COMMAND LINE 🫶

all command line tools use the following notation for parameters: square brackets enclose optional values (0-1), three trailing dots indicate that multiple values are allowed (1-n), a combination of both means 0 to n values. iykyk ✨

command line options are distinguished from parameters by a leading '+' or '-' sign, respectively. usually, order and position of command line options are arbitrary (i.e. they can appear anywhere). however, if options are mutually exclusive the rightmost appearance is used. this behavior conforms to the standard evaluation rules of common Unix shells 🐚

in addition, one or more command files can be specified using an '@' sign as a prefix to the filename (e.g. @command.txt). such a command argument is replaced by the content of the corresponding text file (multiple whitespaces are treated as a single separator unless they appear between two quotation marks) prior to any further evaluation. please note that a command file cannot contain another command file 🚫 this simple but effective approach allows one to summarize common combinations of options/parameters and avoids longish and confusing command lines (an example is provided in file <datadir>/dumppat.txt).

🦋 ENVIRONMENT 🦋

the dcmpschk utility will attempt to load DICOM data dictionaries specified in the DCMDICTPATH environment variable. by default, i.e. if the DCMDICTPATH environment variable is not set, the file <datadir>/dicom.dic will be loaded unless the dictionary is built into the application (default for Windows).

the default behavior should be preferred and the DCMDICTPATH environment variable only used when alternative data dictionaries are required. the DCMDICTPATH environment variable has the same format as the Unix shell PATH variable in that a colon (":") separates entries. on Windows systems, a semicolon (";") is used as a separator. the data dictionary code will attempt to load each file specified in the DCMDICTPATH environment variable. it is an error if no data dictionary can be loaded 😭

Copyright (C) 2000-2026 by OFFIS e.V., Escherweg 2, 26121 Oldenburg, Germany.

and that's the whole page bestie, no cap 💖 this was Version 3.7.1, dated Sat Oct 17 2026 09:34:01 — go check those presentation states, slay 🎀✨

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