9.21. DICOM RTSTRUCT Writer Operator
This application is NOT for medical use.
This example application creates a DICOM RT Dataset, of modality type RTSTRUCT, from a segmentation mask image in MetaImage format, and optionally from the original DICOM series. It can also directly consume a text file containing the detected contours instead of the segmentation mask image. If the corresponding DICOM Part 10 files for the series are provided, the referenced SOP instance UIDs (and other attributes) will be set accordingly in the RTSTRUCT. The output is a DICOM instance of modality type RTSTRUCT stored in a DICOM Part 10 file.
New functionalities introduced in Release 0.7.4 include algorithms to generate the surface mesh of the segmentation image, and to encode the mesh in binary form compatible with stl file format. Additionally, the binary stl data is included in a private tag in the DICOM RT Structure Set: Tag (0011, 1001) has the VR of OB and its value the binary data of the stl file, while (0011,0010) is for the Private Creator Data Element.
This application, in the form of a Docker container, expects an input folder (/input
by default)
and an optional DICOM file folder (/dcm
). Both need to be mapped to the host folders when
the Docker container is started.
In the /input
folder, one of the following two types of files must be present:
An image file in MetaImage format, which is the segmentation mask with a single label
A JSON file that contains the nested list of contours
The /dcm
folder contains the original DICOM instance files of the DICOM series used to generate
the segmentation mask. If they are absent or missing some instances, the DICOM RT Dataset can still
be created, but the attributes referring to original SOP instances will be absent or have empty
values.
This application saves the DICOM RTSTRUCT to the output folder (
/output
by default) in DICOM File Format. The file name is generated by suffixing the input file name with-RTSTRUCT
and the extensiondcm
. The output folder must be mapped to a host folder.Introduced in Release 0.7.4 is a DICOM private tag whose value is the binary content of the stl file for the surface mesh of the segmentation image: Tag (0011, 1001) has the VR of OB and its value the binary data of the stl file, while (0011,0010) is for the Private Creator Data Element.
Logs generated by the application are saved in a folder (
/logs
by default), which similarly must be mapped to a host folder.
The directories in the container are shown below.
The core of the application code is under the folder rtstruct_writer
.
/app_rtstruct_writer
├── buildContainers.sh
├── Dockerfile
├── __init__.py
├── logging_config.json
├── main.py
├── ngc
│ ├── metadata.json
│ └── overview.md
├── public
│ └── docs
│ └── README.md
├── requirements.txt
├── rtstruct_writer
│ ├── app.py
│ ├── contour_detector.py
│ ├── dicom_parser.py
│ ├── __init__.py
│ ├── rtstruct_writer.py
│ └── runtime_envs.py
├── run_app_docker.sh
└── test-data
├── dcm
│ ├── IMG0001.dcm
│ ├── IMG0002.dcm
│ ├── IMG0003.dcm
│ ├── IMG0004.dcm
│ ├── IMG0005.dcm
│ ├── IMG0006.dcm
│ ├── IMG0007.dcm
│ ├── IMG0008.dcm
│ ├── IMG0009.dcm
│ ├── IMG0010.dcm
│ ├── IMG0011.dcm
│ ├── IMG0012.dcm
│ ├── IMG0013.dcm
│ ├── IMG0014.dcm
│ ├── IMG0015.dcm
│ ├── IMG0016.dcm
│ ├── IMG0017.dcm
│ ├── IMG0018.dcm
│ └── IMG0019.dcm
├── json
│ └── 1.2.826.0.1.3680043.2.1125.1.48532560258338587890405155270906492.output.json
└── mhd
├── 1.2.826.0.1.3680043.2.1125.1.48532560258338587890405155270906492.output.mhd
└── 1.2.826.0.1.3680043.2.1125.1.48532560258338587890405155270906492.output.raw
If you want to see the internals of the container and manually run the application, follow these steps:
Start the container in interactive mode. See the next section on how to run the container, and replace the
docker run
command withdocker run --entrypoint /bin/bash
.Once in the the Docker terminal, ensure the current directory is
/app_rtstruct_writer
.Copy
test-data/input/mhd/*
to/input
andtest-data/dcm/*
to/dcm
.Create
/output
and/logs
folders.Enter the command
python ./main.py"
.Once finished, type
exit
.
9.21.6.1. Prerequisites
The segmentation mask image file in MetaImage format
The original dcm files from the single DICOM series used for the segmentation
9.21.6.2. Step 1
Change to your working directory (e.g. my_test
).
9.21.6.3. Step 2
Create, if they do not exist, the following directories under your working directory:
input
and copy over the segmentation mask image file.dcm
and copy over the dcm files of the original DICOM series.output
for the generated DICOM RTSTRUCT dcm file.logs
for log files.
9.21.6.4. Step 3
In your working directory, create a shell script (e.g. run_app_docker.sh
or other name if you
prefer), copy the sample content below, save it, and make sure the variable TAG
has the same value as the actual container tag:
SCRIPT_DIR=$(dirname "$(readlink -f "$0")")
TESTDATA_DIR=$(readlink -f "${SCRIPT_DIR}"/test-data)
APP_NAME="app_rtstruct_writer"
INPUT_TYPE="mhd" # Change to json if using detected contours
# Build Docker image
docker build -t ${APP_NAME} -f ${SCRIPT_DIR}/Dockerfile ${SCRIPT_DIR}
# Run ${APP_NAME} container.
docker run --name ${APP_NAME} -t --rm \
-v ${TESTDATA_DIR}/${INPUT_TYPE}:/input \
-v ${SCRIPT_DIR}/output:/output \
-v ${SCRIPT_DIR}/logs:/logs \
-v ${TESTDATA_DIR}/dcm:/dcm \
-e DEBUG_VSCODE \
-e DEBUG_VSCODE_PORT \
-e NVIDIA_CLARA_NOSYNCLOCK=TRUE \
${APP_NAME}
echo "${APP_NAME}has finished."
9.21.6.5. Step 4
Execute the script below and wait for the application container to finish:
./run_app_docker.sh
9.21.6.6. Step 5
Check for the following output files:
The segmentation results in the
output
directoryA file with the same name as the input file, suffixed with
-RTSTRUCT
and the extension.dcm
.
9.21.6.7. Step 6
To visualize the results, use 3D Slicer with RT Extension or a DICOM viewer that supports RTSTRUCT. For detailed steps, see the viewer documentation. The key steps are as follows:
Import the DICOM RTSTRUCT dcm file as well as the original DICOM series.
Load both the original and the RTSTRUCT series.
Scroll through the slices.
To view 3D rendering, select the
Volume Rendering
module and enable the loaded volume.