AI System Documentation                         vdimage

vdimage  is the system manager. Its primary function is to provide access to the curated image data when specified by an image code. Image codes are specified in the format  <dataset-id><case>-<image>. The following options are available for vdimage:

1. Image location

Without any arguments vdimage returns the system address of the DICOM directory for that image.

Example:     vdimage  UN3203-s8

Returns: /mnt/raid/data/UN/dicom/UN3203-s8

vdimage returns the full path address of the required DICOM image

2. Image Viewing

The vsimba web image viewer is a convenient interactive web tool for viewing DICOM and other images (nifty and v4) on the server. A user logs into the server with vsimba and can navigate the file structure and display images in multiple independent panels. For user created images simply navigate to the appropriate directory and the available image files will be listed for selection and display.

For viewing input DICOM images (which are typically not located in a user’s file system; the suggested method is to create a directory called dimages in the top directory of the users’ account. Selected DICOM dataset images can then be linked to that directory (not copied) for viewing. Linking is much more efficient than copying and, when the user has finished reviewing that image the link may be deleted from dimages without impacting the read-only image dataset archive.

Example: vdimage UN3203-s8 -l

This command does not return any response. A link is created into the users’ dimages directory and can be conveniently access there for reading or image display

3. Obtaining the image-code for the DICOM series-id.

Many datasets identify image CT scans by their  DICOM series-ids in their meta-data files, when archived correctly these id’s are world-wide unique. However, they are not always unique and are very long ana arbitrary. We use image-codes to identify images. When a dataset has documented DICOM series-ids we provide a reverse lookup to identify image-codes from these series ids. To this set the image code to just the dataset name and set the sid= option to the series id.

Example vdimage NT sid=1.2.840.113654.2.55.102841867423385203377925325676152743406

Returns: NT100072-s1, 1.2.840.113654.2.55.102841867423385203377925325676152743406

vdimage returns the image-code followed by the DICOM series-id if a match is found.

4. Obtaining a copy of a curated dataset  image

The simplest way to obtain a copy of the DICOM image relating to an image code is to use vdimage with either an ol=<file> option for a symbolic link, or od=<file> option for an actual copy of the directory and image files.

Examples: vdimage UN3203-s8 ol=test-image1 ; vdimage UN3203-s5 od=test-image2

ls -l

lrwxrwxrwx 1 reeves reeves   33 Aug 17 20:27 test-image1 -> /mnt/raid/data/UN/dicom/UN3203-s8

drwxrwxr-x 2 reeves reeves 4096 Aug 15 17:46 test-image2

In most cases the link option will be sufficient. However, if you want to modify the image directory contents then you should use od=. If you do not provide an argument to the il= or od= option, it will use the image-code as the name of the result.

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Image Reference Format the image-code

The syntax for an image-code that identifies an image within a curated image dataset is:

 <dataset-id><case>-<image>

Where:

<dataset-id> is a one- or two-character identifier for for the research dataset

<case> is the dataset case identifier

<image> is a unique identifier for each image within a case

For example, the code “NL00023-s1” refers to the dataset NL (NLST_Test) dataset case 000023

 and image labeled s1 within that case.