dump2dcm(1)

📦
version 3.7.1 · 10 versions
, in arch rolling

💅 dump2dcm — the OFFIS DCMTK glow-up

Okay so bestie, listen: dump2dcm is a page from the OFFIS DCMTK manual set (that's the family it lives in, iykyk), and it does exactly one iconic thing — it turns an ASCII dump file into a real, honest-to-god DICOM file. Like, glow-up of the century. ✨

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

dump2dcm [options] dumpfile-in dcmfile-out

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

The dump2dcm utility converts an ASCII dump file to a DICOM file. That's the whole vibe. 🫶

And here's the cute part: the dump file has the same format as the output of dcmdump. So you can literally capture the output of dcmdump into a file, tweak some attributes, and boom — new DICOM file. Main character energy fr fr. 👑

🎀 PARAMETERS 🎀

  • dumpfile-in — the dump input filename. Your raw material, bestie.
  • dcmfile-out — the DICOM output filename. Put "-" here and it goes to stdout instead. Slay.

✨ OPTIONS ✨

💜 general options

  • -h, --help — print this help text and exit. Classic.
  • --version — print version information and exit.
  • --arguments — print expanded command line arguments.
  • -q, --quiet — quiet mode, print no warnings and errors. Shhh. 🤫
  • -v, --verbose — verbose mode, print processing details. Tell me everything.
  • -d, --debug — debug mode, print debug information.
  • -ll, --log-level [l]evel: string constant — use level l for the logger. The levels are fatal, error, warn, info, debug, trace.
  • -lc, --log-config [f]ilename: string — use config file f for the logger.

🌈 input options

input file format:

  • +f, --read-meta-info — read meta information if present (default).
  • -f, --ignore-meta-info — ignore file meta information.

file contents byte ordering:

  • +rl, --read-file-little — read OW data with little endian (default).
  • +rb, --read-file-big — read OW data from file with big endian.

other input options:

  • +l, --line [m]ax-length: integer — maximum line length m (default: 4096).

🍓 processing options

unique identifiers:

  • +Ug, --generate-new-uids — generate new Study/Series/SOP Instance UID.
  • -Uo, --dont-overwrite-uids — do not overwrite existing UIDs (default).
  • +Uo, --overwrite-uids — overwrite existing UIDs.

🧚 output options

output file format:

  • +F, --write-file — write file format (default).
  • -F, --write-dataset — write data set without file meta information.
  • +Fu, --update-meta-info — update particular file meta information.

output transfer syntax:

  • +t=, --write-xfer-same — write with same TS as input (default).
  • +te, --write-xfer-little — write with explicit VR little endian.
  • +tb, --write-xfer-big — write with explicit VR big endian TS.
  • +ti, --write-xfer-implicit — write with implicit VR little endian TS.
  • +td, --write-xfer-deflated — write with deflated explicit VR little endian TS.

error handling:

  • -E, --stop-on-error — do not write if dump is damaged (default).
  • +E, --ignore-errors — attempt to write even if dump is damaged.

post-1993 value representations:

  • +u, --enable-new-vr — enable support for new VRs (UN/UT) (default).
  • -u, --disable-new-vr — disable support for new VRs, convert to OB.

group length encoding:

  • +g=, --group-length-recalc — recalculate group lengths if present (default).
  • +g, --group-length-create — always write with group length elements.
  • -g, --group-length-remove — always write without group length elements.

length encoding in sequences and items:

  • +e, --length-explicit — write with explicit lengths (default).
  • -e, --length-undefined — write with undefined lengths.

data set trailing padding (not with --write-dataset):

  • -p=, --padding-retain — do not change padding (default if not --write-dataset).
  • -p, --padding-off — no padding (implicit if --write-dataset).
  • +p, --padding-create [f]ile-pad [i]tem-pad: integer — align file on multiple of f bytes and items on multiple of i bytes.

deflate compression level (only with --write-xfer-deflated):

  • +cl, --compression-level [l]evel: integer (default: 6) — 0=uncompressed, 1=fastest, 9=best compression.

👑 NOTES 👑

🩷 Dump File Description

The input file can be an output of dcmdump (default indented format only). One element (tag, VR, value) must be written into one line, separated by arbitrary spaces or tab characters. A # begins a comment that ends at the line end. Empty lines are allowed. We love a chill parser. 💅

The individual parts of a line have the following syntax:

Tag: (gggg,eeee) — where gggg and eeee are 4-character hexadecimal values representing group and element tag. Spaces and tabs can be anywhere in a tag specification. Flexible king.

VR: Value Representation must be written as 2 characters as in Part 6 of the DICOM standard. No spaces or tabs are allowed between the two characters. If the VR can be determined from the tag, this part of a line is optional.

Value: There are several rules for writing values:

  1. US, SS, UL, SL, UV, SV, FD, FL, OD, OF, OL and OV are written as decimal strings that can be read by scanf().
  2. AT is written as '(gggg,eeee)' with additional spaces stripped off automatically and gggg and eeee being decimal strings that can be read by scanf().
  3. OB and OW values are written as byte or word hexadecimal values separated by '\' character. Alternatively, OB or OW values can be read from a separate file by writing the filename prefixed by a '=' character (e.g. '=largepix.dat'). The contents of the file will be read as is. By default, OW data is expected to be little endian ordered and will be swapped if necessary. No checks will be made to ensure that the amount of data is reasonable in terms of other attributes such as Rows or Columns. In case of compressed pixel data, the line should start with '(7fe0,0010) OB (PixelSequence' in order to distinguish from uncompressed pixel data.
  4. UI is written as '=Name' in data dictionary or as unique identifier string (see 6.), e.g. '[1.2.840.....]'.
  5. Strings without (), <>, [], spaces, tabs and # can be written directly.
  6. Other strings must be surrounded by '[' and ']'. No bracket structure is passed. The value ends at the last ']' in the line. Anything after the ']' is interpreted as comment.
  7. '(' and '<' are interpreted special and may not be used when writing an input file by hand as beginning characters of a string.

Multiple Value are separated by '\'. The lines need not be sorted into ascending tag order. References in DICOM Directories are not supported. Semantic errors are not detected.

🫶 lowkey important: that last bit means the tool is trusting you completely. It is not your accountability partner. Double-check your own data, bestie.

🌟 Examples

The following lines show valid examples of the syntax described above:

 (0008,0020) DA [19921012]            #  8, 1 StudyDate
 (0008,0016) UI =MRImageStorage       # 26, 1 SOPClassUID
 (0002,0012) UI [1.2.276.0.7230010.100.1.1]
 (0020,0032) DS [0.0\0.0]             #  8, 2 ImagePositionPatient
 (0028,0009) AT (3004,000c)           #  4, 1 FrameIncrementPointer
 (0028,0010) US 256                   #  4, 1 Rows
 (0002,0001) OB 01\00

💀 Limitations

Please note that dump2dcm currently does not fully support DICOMDIR files. Specifically, the value of the various offset data elements is not updated automatically by this tool. Not me finding out the hard way 😭 — so like, heads up.

⭐ LOGGING ⭐

The level of logging output of the various command line tools and underlying libraries can be specified by the user. 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. 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.

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 dump2dcm 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.

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

  • dcmdump(1) — the other half of this iconic duo, fr fr 🫶

Copyright (C) 1996-2026 by OFFIS e.V., Escherweg 2, 26121 Oldenburg, Germany.

okay that's the whole thing, bestie, you're officially DICOM-pilled 💅✨

🎀 signature moment: this was Version 3.7.1, dated Sat Oct 17 2026 09:34:01 — the dump2dcm(1) era. Go forth and dump responsibly 🦋
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