Read a Multi-Slice DICOM Series into a 3D Volume — read_dicom

Scans a directory (or vector of DICOM file paths), reads slice headers and pixel data, orders slices spatially by InstanceNumber or ImagePositionPatient, and assembles a 3D numeric array [rows, cols, slices] alongside a wide metadata tibble.

Usage

read_dicom_series(path, recursive = TRUE, rescale = TRUE)

Arguments

path: Directory path or character vector of DICOM file paths.
recursive: Logical. Search subdirectories recursively. Default is TRUE.
rescale: Logical. Apply RescaleSlope and RescaleIntercept. Default is TRUE.

Value

An object of class "dicom_series" (a named list with elements volume ([rows, cols, slices] numeric array), metadata (wide tibble of slice headers), and dims (integer vector)).

Examples

dcm_file <- system.file("extdata", "example.dcm", package = "dicomtk")
series <- read_dicom_series(c(dcm_file, dcm_file))
dim(series$volume)
#> [1] 512 512   2