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-meta-info


         read meta information if present (default)


  -f   --ignore-meta-info


         ignore file meta information

processing options¶

validation:


  +Vd  --validate-document


         validate XML document against DTD


  +Vn  --check-namespace


         check XML namespace in document root
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 TS


  +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 document is invalid (default)


  +E   --ignore-errors


         attempt to write even if document is invalid
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

Character Encoding¶

The DICOM character encoding is determined automatically from the element with tag '0008,0005' (Specific Character Set) - if present. The following character sets are currently supported (requires libxml to include iconv support, see --version output):

ASCII         (ISO_IR 6)    (UTF-8)
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)
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)

Multiple character sets are not supported (only the first value of the 'Specific Character Set' is used for the character encoding in case of value multiplicity).

See dcm2xml documentation for more details on the XML structure.

Binary Data¶

Binary data (*) can be encoded either as a sequence of hex numbers separated by a backslash '\' or in Base64 format (binary='base64'). In addition, binary data can also be read from file (binary='file'). In this case, the filename has to be specified as the element value, e.g.

<element tag="7fe0,0010" vr="OW" ... binary="file">subdir/pixeldata.raw</element>

Please note that the contents of the file will be read as is. 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.

(*) Please note that currently only OB and OW data is supported, i.e. element values with a VR of OD, OF, OL and OV are not regarded as 'binary data' and treated as all other VRs.

Compression¶

If libxml is compiled with zlib support, the input file (xmlfile-in) can also be compressed with ZIP, which usually results in much smaller files. See output of option --version in order to check whether zlib support is available.

Limitations¶

Different versions of libxml might have different limits for the maximum length of an XML element value. Therefore, it should be avoided to use very long element values (e.g. for pixel data).

Please note that xml2dcm currently does not fully support DICOMDIR files. Specifically, the value of the various offset data elements is not updated automatically by this tool.