Is there any data loss when i convert my dicom image to any other format???

Dear Friend, Is there any data loss when i convert a dicom image to any other format??? I mean is it sure that it is 100% reliable if we convert a dicom image to any other formats even to any lossless formats???

Answer 1

[Brett Shoelson]

If you save your image in a lossless format, the conversion is lossless. Otherwise, not necessarily. Are you converting with imread/imwrite?

[Abu Thoppan]

i use an other conversion software

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

You lose most or all of the meta-data information (the new TIFF class can help you preserve some of it.) Otherwise Brett's answer applies.

[Brett Shoelson]

Right. But the metadata isn't really part of the image. And you can also save metadata in a structure returned by dicominfo.

[Walter Roberson]

That you could potentially save the metadata is like saying that you could save the original image to avoid loss of image data by converting to a lossy image format. The fact is that the image produced by saving the DICOM image does _not_ have the metadata; whether you deem it to be "lost" or not depends on your definition of "lost" includes the notion of accessing auxillary information.

[Brett Shoelson]

Actually, I would say that whether converting a DICOM image to a lossless image format is truly lossless (given that you would lose metadata) is more a reflection of how you define the image. If you include the header, then the conversion is lossy. If not, not.

But then, if loss of metadata implies LOSSY, then essentially no conversion is lossless--since the header data that is kept is likely to differ from image format to image format.

For most purposes, I think that people generally refer to lossless meaning the image itself doesn't lose information. That's how I use the term.

[Walter Roberson]

It is much the same question as whether a "JPEG Image" includes the EXIF information or just the extracted image.

My personal opinion is that if you qualify an image with a format name then you include any properties of the format, as otherwise what you have is "an image extracted from an <X> format file".

Anyhow, the question was ambiguous on this point.

[Brett Shoelson]

That works for me.

Cheers,

Brett