dcmj2pnm error: cannot change to unencapsulated representation for pixel data

Question

I am trying to use the DCMJ2PNM binary from the DCMTK toolkit to convert a DICOM file to a set of BMPs. I am using the following command:

  dcmj2pnm +Fa +ob test.dcm .\frames\test_

I keep getting the error "cannot change to unencapsulated representation for pixel data". Does anyone know what I can do to process this image?

Answer 1

The error is implying that your test.dcm file is a compressed DICOM file. Looking at the manual page for the tool here, it implies the tool supports decompressing JPEG and RLE images. Do you know what format/transfer syntax your file is encoded as? It sounds like it may be encoded in a transfer syntax other than JPEG or RLE. You can use the dcmdmp utility to list the contents of the file and see the transfer syntax.

Answer 2

You can also use GDCM. Simply run:

gdcmconv --raw test.dcm test-raw.dcm

GDCM handles decompressing from JPEG, JPEG-LS, JPEG 2000 and RLE. This is transparent to the user, you don't even need to know the encapsulation mechanism used.

HTH

ref: http://gdcm.sourceforge.net/html/gdcmconv.html