Introduction:

This kit contains a File Format Plugin for Adobe Photoshop. It is a
FAT binary and runs on 68k or PPC.

Requirements:

It has been tested with Mac version 3.0.5. The source is derived from
the examples in the Adobe development kit available from their web
site. It has not been tested with pre-3.0 versions though the
appropriate resources should be there. It does require 16 bit
grayscale support from Photoshop itself though, which probably isn't
in pre-3.0 versions.

Features:

Currently it handles:

	- 8 and 16 bit grayscale, signed or unsigned data
	- uncompressed transfer syntaxes
	- DICOM part 10 style meta-information headers
	- older ACR/NEMA and SPI files in little or big endian byte order

It also only reads for now, and does not yet write.

Furthermore, it is a file format plugin, not an acquire plugin, and hence
is not useable with NIH Image. This has the advantage that DICOM files
can be opened from the Open menu as any other file. Furthermore there
is automatic recognition of a FileType of "DICM" and file extensions of
".dc3" and ".dic". Any file type can be opened though, by selecting Show
All in the Open dialog and choosing a file type of "Dicom File".

Installation:

To use, just drag the "DicomFile" file into the "Plug-ins:File Format"
folder in the Photoshop home folder.

Usage:

When you open a 16 bit DICOM file such as a CT or MR from the Open menu
using this plugin, you will get a 16 bit grayscale image in Photoshop,
with which you can't do very much ... it may look ugly as Photoshop tries
to display the whole range of pixel values. Select Image/Levels/AutoLevels
from the menu and all the used pixel values will be expanded to fill the
available grayscale. You can use the manual levels adjustment to select
the window level and width you want, and the change the mode to 8 bit
grayscale to manipulate the image further, or save it as something "normal"
you can import into other programs.

Source:

If you have retrieved the source, to compile it with CW 9, just open the
68k Project first, make that, then switch to the PPC project, and make
that (which incorporates the code resource from the 68k make), which
produces the plugin "DicomFile".

If you want to mess with the resources, use the MPW Rez from the Toolserver
menu in CW to recompile "DicomFile.r" and make "Mac:DicomFile.rsrc" which
gets incorporated in the 68k project.

Feedback:

Please send reports of any problems, preferrably with sample problem files,
to me at "dclunie@flash.us.com". Thanks.

© Copyright 1996 by David A. Clunie. All Rights Reserved.

Last Modified: 6 Oct 1996 11:16 EDT