# Changing orientation of slices in DICOM files

**URL:** <https://discourse.slicer.org/t/changing-orientation-of-slices-in-dicom-files/4820>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [November 20, 2018, 5:43pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/changing-orientation-of-slices-in-dicom-files/4820 "2018-11-20T17:43:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![lambrosone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9d8465/32.png) [@lambrosone](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/lambrosone)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 5:43pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/changing-orientation-of-slices-in-dicom-files/4820/1 "2018-11-20T17:43:43Z")

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Operating system:win 10  
Slicer version: 4.8  
Expected behavior:  
Actual behavior:

Can slicer change the orientation of the 3 cardinal views of the dicom data, IE say to change the orientation of the views? Say I want a view which changes the direction of the view of the orbit away from the normal?

thanks

V

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**Author:** ![lassoan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/lassoan/32/13_2.png) [@lassoan](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/lassoan)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 6:31pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/changing-orientation-of-slices-in-dicom-files/4820/2 "2018-11-20T18:31:03Z")

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Yes you can modify DICOM files using Slicer. Import the DICOM file, apply a transform, then [export to DICOM](https://www.slicer.org/wiki/Documentation/Nightly/Modules/DICOM#DICOM_export).

Original metadata of the file is not preserved during this workflow. So, if you want to modify just a few tags while keeping all other metadata unchanged then you can use pydicom or DCMTK’s dcmodify tool instead.

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**Author:** ![lambrosone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9d8465/32.png) [@lambrosone](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/lambrosone)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 6:45pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/changing-orientation-of-slices-in-dicom-files/4820/3 "2018-11-20T18:45:13Z")

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thank you very much. The question is how do you apply the transform… I want to generate a plane and reformat the image along the new plane

V

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**Author:** ![lassoan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/lassoan/32/13_2.png) [@lassoan](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/lassoan)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 9:44pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/changing-orientation-of-slices-in-dicom-files/4820/4 "2018-11-20T21:44:40Z")

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For now, you can just apply a transform and adjust the angles using sliders. Later, if everything works well then you can tune how you define the new image orientation.

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**Author:** ![lambrosone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9d8465/32.png) [@lambrosone](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/lambrosone)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 11:13pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/changing-orientation-of-slices-in-dicom-files/4820/5 "2018-11-20T23:13:41Z")

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I am grateful for your help, but I don’t know how to apply a transform or generate one or use the sliders. Is there an article you can refer me to? What is a transformable node? I want to alter the slices to a 3point defined plane.

thank you

V

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![lassoan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/lassoan/32/13_2.png) [@lassoan](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/lassoan)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2018, 11:44pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/changing-orientation-of-slices-in-dicom-files/4820/6 "2018-11-20T23:44:18Z")

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[Transforms module documentation](https://www.slicer.org/wiki/Documentation/Nightly/Modules/Transforms) should help.

You can fit a plane to markup points as it is shown in this [example in the script repository](https://www.slicer.org/wiki/Documentation/Nightly/ScriptRepository#Fit_slice_plane_to_markup_fiducials). You can modify the script to not set the slice plane but instead set the transform

What would you like to align? There is a [module and code snippets available](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/acpc-transform-question/3525) for brain AC-PC transformation.

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**Author:** ![lambrosone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9d8465/32.png) [@lambrosone](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/lambrosone)\
**Post date:** [November 21, 2018, 12:20am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/changing-orientation-of-slices-in-dicom-files/4820/7 "2018-11-21T00:20:16Z")

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Thanks, I’ll try that. I am just trying to align orbits to a plane.

V