dicom

An MRI or CT scan produces a series of dicom images. These usually have the file extension .ima or .dcm

For a good introduction to the dicom format see: http://www.sph.sc.edu/comd/rorden/dicom.html

Dicom images usually require specialised software to read and display them. Cmgui can read dicom images in and use them to create volume textures. You can indicate an image is of dicom format by using dcm :

   # read in mri data and create a volume texture
   gfx create texture tract image dcm:images/BIER_Peter_3_000.ima number_pattern 000 number_series 7 262 1 width 1 height 1 depth 1 distortion 0 0 0 colour 0 0 0 alpha 0 decal linear_filter resize_nearest_filter clamp_wrap;

If on a unix machine Image Magick should be able to convert a dicom file into another graphics format, using the convert command, although it does not seem to work on 16 bit images. If on a windows machine the DCM2JPG console application is very useful for converting to jpg. http://www.sph.sc.edu/comd/rorden/ezdicom.html#console It is free to download.

You can also convert or view a dicom image on a unix machine by using xmedcon (or medcon). This can be downloaded from http://xmedcon.sourceforge.net/Main/HomePage

Note that the dicom format stores header information within the file as while as the captured image. Image Magick can be used to extract some header information by using the identify option with the convert command :

   convert -identify bob.dcm bob.jpg

If you are using a Mac, the software OsiriX can be used to view dicom images. You can also browse the dicom header metadata.