DICOMDUMP(1)

📦
version 0.8.17 · 7 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 NAME 💖

dicomdump — the vtk-dicom CLI, and yes she's that girl ✨

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

✨ usage ✨

okay so here's the whole summoning ritual:

dicomdump file1.dcm [file2.dcm ...]

one file, or a whole lil stack of files, your call bestie 🫶

🎀 options 🎀

  • -k tag — hand me a tag or a key and I'll print exactly that one. you can stack this flag as many times as your heart desires 💅
  • -q <query.txt> — point me at a file that lists which elements you want printed. like a little shopping list but for tags 🛍️
  • --charset <cs> — the charset to use if SpecificCharacterSet is missing. the backup bestie of character sets 🦋
  • --help — prints a brief help message. short, sweet, iconic ✨
  • --version — prints the software version. receipts, but make it software 💖

so the main gig: dump the metadata from a set of DICOM files as text. that's it. that's the job. no cap.

by default, literally every attribute gets dumped. all of them. the full lore. 🙈 but bestie, if you only want a few attributes, you can name their tags with -k — and the -k option can be repeated as many times as you need, no shade, go wild. tags can come in hexadecimal GGGG,EEEE format, or in text format as specified in the DICOM dictionary key. either one, I don't judge 💅

orrrr you can drop the tags into a query file and pass it with the -q option — one tag per line, clean and organized, main character energy.

and here's the part that's giving ✨advanced✨: attributes nested inside sequences? specify them with a tag path, like:

-k Tag1/Tag2/Tag3

and you can split the components of that path with either a forward slash or a backslash. pick your fighter, both slay. 🔥

now for text attribute values — and listen, this part matters:

any unprintable bytes get replaced with the four characters "\nnn", where nnn is the three digit octal code for that byte. so like, they don't just vanish, they get a lil name tag 🏷️

⚠️ and what counts as "unprintable"? control characters, or bytes that cannot be decoded with the SpecificCharacterSet of the DICOM file. so if the charset can't read it, it's getting octal'd. periodt.

and one more, because a backslash is a whole situation: a backslash itself gets replaced by its byte value "\134" if the VR is ST, LT or UT — which is to say, any VR where backslash isn't used as a separator for multi-valued attributes. iykyk. 💀

👑 AUTHOR 👑

this manual page was written by Mathieu Malaterre <malat@debian.org> for the Debian GNU/Linux system, but may be used by others. give them their flowers fr fr 🌹

and that's a wrap bestie 💜 this was dicomdump version 0.8.17, dated August 2026 — go dump some metadata, you absolute icon 🎀🌈⭐

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