[vtkusers] Writer Dicom / ACR / NEMA in gdcm

[Mathieu Malaterre]

Hello,

	GDCM is an open source with a BSD license library that allows you to 
read and write DICOM and ACR-NEMA file. It has been sucessfully 
integrated in ITK and as of today it comes with a vtkGDCMWriter that 
allows you to save your image in DICOM format.

	You can download the CVS version from :

http://www.creatis.insa-lyon.fr/Public/Gdcm/

Please note that the VTK writer is brand new, so it's still considered 
as very experimental.

	All bug/problem report should be directed directly to gdcm ML:

http://www.creatis.insa-lyon.fr/mailman/listinfo/dcmlib

Mathieu

Gdcm is yet another C++ library dedicated to reading/parsing and writing
Dicom medical files.
GDCM stands as a short for "Grass roots DiCoM.
What gdcm IS

     * gdcm implements the dicom base standard part 5 that concentrates
on image file format. Hence gdcm supports the following formats:
           o ACR-NEMA version 1 and 2
           o Dicom version 3.0 (including various encodings of jpeg,
RLE). Please refer to gdcm conformance summary for more details.
     * gdcm is distributed with Berkeley-like license.
     * gdcm targets both GNU/Un*ces and Windows/VC++ (refer to
requirements for details).
     * gdcm comes with a VTK shallow wrapper class vtkGdcmReader (refer
to VtkGdcm) to ease the burden of VTK users,
     * gdcm also comes with gdcmPython it's SWIG generated Python wrappers.

What gdcm is NOT
Except for dicom base standard part 5 gdcm does NOT implement any other
part of the Dicom base standard (as opposed to other C++ based with open
license libraries like DCMTK . or CTN).
In particular gdcm is not aware of:

     * the Dicom network file exchange protocol (Query/Retrieve),
     * the Dicom media storage formats,
     * Print, Verification
     * ANY OTHER PART of Dicom.

What gdcm still misses
Among all the features of the dicom part 5 gdcm doesn't implement (yet?)

     * the integration of (optional) overlays on image.
     * a more complete supports of the various Jpeg encodings

Gdcm also still needs

     * an enhanced and simpler API to access the various forms of pixel
data (e.g. RGB, GrayLevel, RawData...),
     * a decent user's guide (currently, only a partial doxygenation is
available),
     * the python wrappers to be fixed,
     * a simple wxWidgets Dicom file editor.