Did you have any luck working on this?

I think I have the solution but the hospital network prevents me from uploading the code to the repository and I have been busy with other works. Can I send the modified code to you via email for you to verify?

Sure, that would be fine.

Mailed to pieper@isomics.com. Thanks!

r24266

http://viewvc.slicer.org/viewvc.cgi/Slicer4?view=revision&revision=24266

Thanks for the fixes!

I needed to do some other tweaks to get things working, but it seems reliable to
me now. I couldn't get any of the VR options to work for me, but I have a workaround
that seems good enough for now.

Awesome. I am glad it worked out! Also, I can't take the credit alone. Kevin helped me greatly during this fix.

Nice work and thanks to both you and Kevin for fixing it. I'd never figured out why it just wasn't working but it's a fun feature and I hope people find it useful.

Great! Thanks!

I am having problems with exporting a scene to DICOM (windows and mac, 4.8.1 and 4.9.0, always with the same error "UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xdc in position"), but it's working on linux. Any hintes? Thanks

@skat it looks like there's an unexpected character, perhaps something like a non-ascii character in a username or directory path? It would be great if you could provide a way to reproduce the issue using publicly available data (e.g. from the SampleData module or similar).

Hi, I changed the code a little bit
dump = str(dump) + candygram.encode('utf8')
and now get the scene imported in the local dicom database (although it's not assigned to the correct patient). I'll test with the sampledata next week.

Hi, sorry for the delay. I tried again, with test data and my own, and now it works (without my changes). Strange, I only rebooted the system in the meantime. Only thing that still happens is that the scene is added to the last patient in the DICOM list, so if there are more than one patient, it is a bit abritrary where the bundle file ends up with.

Back to "normal", i.e. not working. With only the MR-head from the testdata loaded, I cannot create the DICOM/scene file. Attached are all logs I get.

I can only re-iterate Steve:
"it looks like there's an unexpected character, perhaps something like a non-ascii character in a username or directory path? It would be great if you could provide a way to reproduce the issue using publicly available data (e.g. from the SampleData module or similar)."
Please describe all the steps you take in detail so that we can reproduce it. Thanks!

Well I tried to copy all the info from the logs into the text file. What I did was:

1. Download MR-head.nrrd from testdata
2. Load it into an empty scene
3. Create Subject "Test"
4. Create Child study "MRI"
5. Move MR-head into study
6. Right click study "MRI", choose Export to DICOM
7. Fill in Birtdate (19700101), PatientID (00123), Patientname (Test), Sex (M)
8. Choose Export entire scene, and Import exported data
9. Press Export and wait for Error

I'm not experienced with python, if you could tell me how to print the contents of candygram I am happy to provide the information.

I am using my modification again: dump = str(dump) + candygram.encode('utf8'), then it works more or less.
The dicom database must not be empty (Error "No reference file! DICOM database is empty"). If there is a patient in the database, the scene file will be added to this patient (whatever that is), and the tags taken from the images already in the database. I also get some warnings:
Ignoring destinationDirectoryName parameter, just taking it as indication we should copy!
Found patient in the database as UId: 8
Need to insert new study: "1.2.276.0.7230010.3.1.2.2356831173.8592.1532529982.561"
Study Added
Need to insert new series: "1.2.276.0.7230010.3.1.3.2356831173.8592.1532529982.562"
Series Added

Thanks for the description! I also get an error, but it's a different one.

Basically for me the first problem seems to be this:
"Saving Image...
0
something is none"
Then there is a python error in logging.

Steve, do you have time to investigate this? You know the exporter the best. Thanks!

Thanks for reporting this - I took a look and the underlying problem appears to be the way the mrb data is being encoded in the dicom file. Currently we use dump2dcm to make the dicom binary from a text file and put the mrb in a private tag (this should be good) but the's value representation (VR) is LO (long string) which is a limitation because the mrb could have arbitrary characters in it.

https://github.com/Slicer/Slicer/blob/master/Modules/Scripted/DICOMLib/DICOMExportScene.py#L154-L175

Instead it looks like we should be able to use option 3 of the NOTES: Dump File Description section of the dump2dcm manual where OB (other byte) data is encoded in an external file using a syntax like "=mrbData.dat". This would avoid the whole encoding step.

https://support.dcmtk.org/docs/dump2dcm.html

I don't really have time to fix this right now but I'd be happy to work with someone who wanted to implement the changes and test them (probably best to write a self-test to confirm it's working as expected).

I'm not sure about the part involving which patient it is associated with, is that something you know about @pinter? Is that something managed by the subject hierarchy and the export dialog?

Thanks for verifying this. As I noted before it seems to work on linux (at least when I tested it once), but a clean solution would of course be preferable.
I have little experience with Slicer and python, and I am on holidays in August and quite busy with another project in September. If I can be of any help (for testing) I can try to assist, but probably not in the next couple of weeks.

I should really write a selftest for this.

@pinter are there any dicom export tests currently, maybe as part of the subject hierarchy?

Yes exactly, this test has DICOM import and loading:
https://github.com/Slicer/Slicer/blob/master/Applications/SlicerApp/Testing/Python/SubjectHierarchyGenericSelfTest.py#L164
There are others in SlicerRT, not sure if you're looking for examples or places to put the export test.

Hi everyone, I finished some other project and can offer to help/test things now if needed.