# DICOM RLE Support in Slicer

**URL:** <https://discourse.slicer.org/t/dicom-rle-support-in-slicer/17656>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [May 17, 2021, 5:23pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/dicom-rle-support-in-slicer/17656 "2021-05-17T17:23:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 5

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**Author:** ![fedorov](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/fedorov/32/14_2.png) [@fedorov](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/fedorov)\
**Post date:** [May 17, 2021, 6:11pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/dicom-rle-support-in-slicer/17656/5 "2021-05-17T18:11:21Z")

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> [@lassoan](#):
>
> do you remember why you did not end up exposing the RLE option on the itkimage2segimage interface?

We added and tested reading of RLE-compressed segmentations, and did some experiments with writing, but I don’t recall if the result was documented. I think the main concern is that introducing compression will further complicate interoperability. Note that RLE would be applied **after** bit packing (for binary segmentations). Bit packing alone can be challenging for interoperability, and I am not convinced we should make it even more challenging.

No one asked about this before - it could be added as an option, but I would want to know how bit packing + RLE is supported in the existing tools before adding it.

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