How to edit a DICOM image

How do I edit a DICOM image (e.g. overlaying a black box) while maintaining the DICOM file format?

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

There currently is no image processing function to directly add features to a DICOM image. Instead, use the following workflow to edit the desired image and rewrite to a DICOM file:

1) Read in and display DICOM image

img = dicomread('FILENAME.dcm');

imshow(img,'DisplayRange',[]);

2) Plot desired features onto the image (e.g. 'rectangle')

3) Get image data array for updated figure

img = getframe();

4) Write image data to new DICOM file

dicomwrite(img.cdata,'FILENAME_REDACTED.dcm')

If you would like to maintain the metadata from the original file, store it using 'dicominfo' and pass the resulting struct as an argument to 'dicomwrite'.