Go home with the CD-ROM

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While on vacation in Sweden I started having a lot of pain on my lower back. I thought it might be a kidney problem and after a few days without the problem going away by itself I went to the Emergency Room at Sundsvall's hospital (sjukhus in Swedish in case you are wondering). Though I was kindly asked to return on the evening as my condition was not life threatening.

When I returned my condition worsen quite a bit and I was told to stay overnight at the hospital (not a good thing when you are on a vacation trip). Fortunately, after three days my blood tests had improved and I was allowed to leave the hospital. We were very lucky as our friends in Sundsvall helped us to go through this (once again, thank you very much guys!!).

While at the hospital they performed a CT scan to determine what and where the problem was. They found a 2.5mm stone leaving my right kidney and I was told the problem will likely dissappear without surgery, which luckily did.

When I left the hospital I was provided with a CD-ROM with the DICOM files of my scan so my doctor at home can check it out. It just never occurred to me before that a data CD-ROM could be the outcome of a hospital stay.

Update: BTW, the CD-ROM included a Windows-based viewer software. After installing dmctk in Ubuntu and having several errors when trying to convert the DICOM files to JPEG I reverted to the Windows viewer that worked like a charm, no installation was required.

Comments

Hiroshi Ikeda said…
Try ImageJ (Java, so no matter your OS is) with a plugin called Volume Viewer for view in 3D.
ImageJ opens directly the DICOM files as a stack and then you can convert them to other format.
Give a try and good luck!!!
4:41 pm
misan said…
I'll try it out. Thanks for the tip.
12:16 am
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