Automated DICOM metadata and volumetric anatomical information extraction for radiation dosimetry. (August 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Papamichail, D; Ploussi, A; Kordolaimi, S; Karavasilis, E; Papadimitroulas, P; Syrgiamiotis, V; Efstathopoulos, E
• Is Part Of: Journal of physics. Number 637(2015)
• Publication Date: 2015-08
• Subjects: Physics -- Congresses; 530.5
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/637/1/012022
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1742-6588

Abstract

Abstract: Patient-specific dosimetry calculations based on simulation techniques have as a prerequisite the modeling of the modality system and the creation of voxelized phantoms. This procedure requires the knowledge of scanning parameters and patients' information included in a DICOM file as well as image segmentation. However, the extraction of this information is complicated and time-consuming. The objective of this study was to develop a simple graphical user interface (GUI) to (i) automatically extract metadata from every slice image of a DICOM file in a single query and (ii) interactively specify the regions of interest (ROI) without explicit access to the radiology information system. The user-friendly application developed in Matlab environment. The user can select a series of DICOM files and manage their text and graphical data. The metadata are automatically formatted and presented to the user as a Microsoft Excel file. The volumetric maps are formed by interactively specifying the ROIs and by assigning a specific value in every ROI. The result is stored in DICOM format, for data and trend analysis. The developed GUI is easy, fast and and constitutes a very useful tool for individualized dosimetry. One of the future goals is to incorporate a remote access to a PACS server functionality.