dsr2html(1)

📦
version 3.7.1 · 10 versions
, in arch rolling

🌸 NAME 🌸

dsr2html — render DICOM SR file and data set to HTML/XHTML. Yep bestie, this is the dsr2html(1) page from OFFIS DCMTK, and we’re gonna get through it together 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

dsr2html [options] dsrfile-in [htmlfile-out]

That’s the whole vibe: options first, then the input file, then optionally where the HTML goes.

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay so dsr2html renders the contents of a DICOM Structured Reporting (SR) document (file format or raw data set) to HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) version 3.2 or 4.01 as well as to XHTML (Extensible Hyper Text Markup Language) version 1.1. 💖

If dsr2html reads a raw data set (DICOM data without a file format meta-header) it will attempt to guess the transfer syntax by examining the first few bytes of the file. It is not always possible to correctly guess the transfer syntax and it is better to convert a data set to a file format whenever possible (using the dcmconv utility). It is also possible to use the -f and -t[ieb] options to force dsr2html to read a dataset with a particular transfer syntax. No cap, that guessing thing is lowkey risky.

🎀 PARAMETERS 🎀

  • dsrfile-in — DICOM SR input filename to be rendered ("-" for stdin)
  • htmlfile-out — HTML/XHTML output filename (default: stdout)

💅 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

🍓 input options 🍓

input file format:

  • +f, --read-file — read file format or data set (default)
  • +fo, --read-file-only — read file format only
  • -f, --read-dataset — read data set without file meta information

input transfer syntax:

  • -t=, --read-xfer-auto — use TS recognition (default)
  • -td, --read-xfer-detect — ignore TS specified in the file meta header
  • -te, --read-xfer-little — read with explicit VR little endian TS
  • -tb, --read-xfer-big — read with explicit VR big endian TS
  • -ti, --read-xfer-implicit — read with implicit VR little endian TS

🧚 processing options 🧚

additional information:

  • -Ip, --processing-details — show currently processed content item

error handling:

  • -Er, --unknown-relationship — accept unknown/missing relationship type
  • -Ev, --invalid-item-value — accept invalid content item value (e.g. violation of VR or VM definition)
  • -Ec, --ignore-constraints — ignore relationship content constraints
  • -Ee, --ignore-item-errors — do not abort on content item errors, just warn (e.g. missing value type specific attributes)
  • -Ei, --skip-invalid-items — skip invalid content items (incl. sub-tree)
  • -Dv, --disable-vr-checker — disable check for VR-conformant string values

specific character set:

  • +Cr, --charset-require — require declaration of extended charset (default)
  • +Ca, --charset-assume [c]harset: string — assume charset c if no extended charset declared
  • --charset-check-all — check all data elements with string values (default: only PN, LO, LT, SH, ST, UC and UT)
note: this option is only used for the extended check whether the Specific Character Set (0008,0005) attribute should be present, but not for the conversion of unaffected element values to UTF-8 (e.g. element values with a VR of CS)
  • +U8, --convert-to-utf8 — convert all element values that are affected by Specific Character Set (0008,0005) to UTF-8
note: requires support from an underlying character encoding library (see output of --version on which one is available)

👑 output options 👑

HTML/XHTML compatibility:

  • +H3, --html-3.2 — use only HTML version 3.2 compatible features
  • +H4, --html-4.0 — allow all HTML version 4.01 features (default)
  • +X1, --xhtml-1.1 — comply with XHTML version 1.1 specification
  • +Hd, --add-document-type — add reference to SGML document type definition

cascading style sheet (CSS), not with HTML 3.2:

  • +Sr, --css-reference URL: string — add reference to specified CSS to document
  • +Sf, --css-file [f]ilename: string — embed content of specified CSS into document

general rendering:

  • +Ri, --expand-inline — expand short content items inline (default)
  • -Ri, --never-expand-inline — never expand content items inline
  • +Ra, --always-expand-inline — always expand content items inline
  • +Rd, --render-full-data — render full data of content items
  • +Rt, --section-title-inline — render section titles inline, not separately
  • +Rh, --hyperlink-url-prefix [p]refix: string — use URL prefix p for hyperlinks to composite objects (default: http://localhost/dicom.cgi)

document rendering:

  • +Dt, --document-type-title — use document type as document title (default)
  • +Dp, --patient-info-title — use patient information as document title
  • -Dh, --no-document-header — do not render general document information

code rendering:

  • +Ci, --render-inline-codes — render codes in continuous text blocks
  • +Cn, --concept-name-codes — render code of concept names
  • +Cu, --numeric-unit-codes — render code of numeric measurement units
  • +Cv, --code-value-unit — use code value as measurement unit (default)
  • +Cm, --code-meaning-unit — use code meaning as measurement unit
  • +Cc, --render-all-codes — render all codes (implies +Ci, +Cn and +Cu)
  • +Ct, --code-details-tooltip — render code details as a tooltip (implies +Cc)

🌟 NOTES 🌟

🔥 DICOM Conformance 🔥

The dsr2html utility supports the following SOP Classes:

  • SpectaclePrescriptionReportStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.78.6
  • MacularGridThicknessAndVolumeReportStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.79.1
  • BasicTextSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.11
  • EnhancedSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.22
  • ComprehensiveSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.33
  • Comprehensive3DSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.34
  • ProcedureLogStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.40
  • MammographyCADSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.50
  • KeyObjectSelectionDocumentStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.59
  • ChestCADSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.65
  • XRayRadiationDoseSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.67
  • RadiopharmaceuticalRadiationDoseSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.68
  • ColonCADSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.69
  • ImplantationPlanSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.70
  • AcquisitionContextSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.71
  • SimplifiedAdultEchoSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.72
  • PatientRadiationDoseSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.73
  • PlannedImagingAgentAdministrationSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.74
  • PerformedImagingAgentAdministrationSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.75
  • WaveformAnnotationSRStorage — 1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.88.77
  • RenditionSelectionDocumentRealTimeCommunication — 1.2.840.10008.10.4 (*)
(*) This is not a Storage SOP Class, but used for Real-Time Communication.

🦋 Character Encoding 🦋

The HTML/XHTML encoding is determined automatically from the DICOM attribute (0008,0005) "Specific Character Set" using the following mapping:

  • ASCII (ISO_IR 6) => (none)
  • UTF-8 ("ISO_IR 192") => "UTF-8"
  • ISO Latin 1 ("ISO_IR 100") => "ISO-8859-1"
  • ISO Latin 2 ("ISO_IR 101") => "ISO-8859-2"
  • ISO Latin 3 ("ISO_IR 109") => "ISO-8859-3"
  • ISO Latin 4 ("ISO_IR 110") => "ISO-8859-4"
  • ISO Latin 5 ("ISO_IR 148") => "ISO-8859-9"
  • ISO Latin 9 ("ISO_IR 203") => "ISO-8859-15"
  • Cyrillic ("ISO_IR 144") => "ISO-8859-5"
  • Arabic ("ISO_IR 127") => "ISO-8859-6"
  • Greek ("ISO_IR 126") => "ISO-8859-7"
  • Hebrew ("ISO_IR 138") => "ISO-8859-8"
  • Thai ("ISO_IR 166") => "TIS-620"
  • Japanese ("ISO 2022 IR 13\ISO 2022 IR 87") => "ISO-2022-JP"
  • Korean ("ISO 2022 IR 6\ISO 2022 IR 149") => "ISO-2022-KR"
  • Chinese ("ISO 2022 IR 6\ISO 2022 IR 58") => "ISO-2022-CN"
  • Chinese ("GB18030") => "GB18030"
  • Chinese ("GBK") => "GBK"

If this DICOM attribute is missing in the input file, although needed, option --charset-assume can be used to specify an appropriate character set manually (using one of the DICOM defined terms). For reasons of backward compatibility with previous versions of this tool, the following terms are also supported and mapped automatically to the associated DICOM defined terms: latin-1, latin-2, latin-3, latin-4, latin-5, latin-9, cyrillic, arabic, greek, hebrew.

Option --convert-to-utf8 can be used to convert the DICOM file or data set to UTF-8 encoding prior to the rendering to HTML/XHTML format.

🛡️ Security 🛡️

⚠️ Please note that using one of the options --css-reference, --css-file or --hyperlink-url-prefix can lead to security issues, as an attacker could misuse them to potentially inject dangerous content into the HTML/XHTML output. The values passed to these options are not checked, neither the URL and prefix nor the content of the specified CSS file.

💬 LOGGING 💬

okay so bestie, you can literally control how chatty these tools are — both the command line tools themselves and the libraries living under them 🫶. By default, only errors and warnings get written to the standard error stream (very demure, very mindful). Using option --verbose also gets you informational messages like processing details. And option --debug is the one that spills the internal-activity tea ☕, e.g. for debugging purposes.

Other logging levels can be picked with option --log-level. In --quiet mode, only fatal errors are reported — and in those very severe error events, the application will usually terminate 💀. For more details on the different logging levels, see the documentation of module "oflog".

Now, if you want that logging output written to a file (optionally with logfile rotation), to syslog (Unix) or to the event log (Windows), option --log-config is your girl ✨. This configuration file also lets you direct only certain messages to a particular output stream and filter certain messages based on the module or application where they're generated. An example configuration file is provided in <etcdir>/logger.cfg — iconic.

🖥️ COMMAND LINE 🖥️

All command line tools use the following notation for parameters, so memorize this, it's giving syntax legend:

  • 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

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 — rightmost wins, no cap 👑. 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 🚫 — no inception, babes.

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. Slay, honestly.

🌍 ENVIRONMENT 🌍

The dsr2html 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 😭 — like, full stop.

Depending on the command line options specified, the dsr2html utility will attempt to load character set mapping tables. This happens when DCMTK was compiled with the oficonv library (which is the default) and the mapping tables are not built into the library (default when DCMTK uses shared libraries).

The mapping table files are expected in DCMTK's <datadir>. The DCMICONVPATH environment variable can be used to specify a different location. If a different location is specified, those mapping tables also replace any built-in tables 👀 — yes, they override, so be cute about it.

📁 FILES 📁

  • <datadir>/report.css — Sample Cascading Stylesheet file for HTML 🎀
  • <datadir>/reportx.css — Sample Cascading Stylesheet file for XHTML 🦋

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

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

and that's the whole page, bestie, we ate and left absolutely zero crumbs 🍓✨ this was Version 3.7.1, dated Sat Oct 17 2026 09:34:01 — screenshot it, frame it, put it on the fridge 💜

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