The DICOM commands manage images in the DICOM format which is a tagged image format used by all medical image device manufactureres. The image viewer can manage images in the native DICOM (part 10 ) format and display them correctly. vdcmtovx converts DICOM images to VisionX format and maintains the origianl DICOM header informaton in special VisionX tags. vdcminfo can be used to review the header information on both native DICOM and VisionX files with DICOM information tags.

The DICOM format is very complex and is continuously being updated. The main part supported by VisionX is the basic image format. Sequences of DICOM images that form an acquisition are ususally assembeled into a single VisionX file.

Basic file scale and resolution information is copied to the history section of the VisionX header and is used by some VisionX commands. Once a file has been processed by a VisionX command this information is automatically invalidated. In cases where this information is still correct it may be revalidated by the vbrand command. The following table lists important basic commands: