Slow loading dicom CT slices (~300)

Support
1

Hi,

I wanted to ask if its normal to take couple of minutes to load CT volume of about 300 slices?

I used to drag + drop, which took long, so importing dicom files was quick. But then loading the actual CT volume to view/segment takes couple of minutes. Although I used an older version of slicer (5.4). Is that the reason?

2

No, it shouldn’t take that long. Is there something special about your data compared to sample data?

3

Hi,

nothing special, it’s a high-resolution diagnostic CT with about 300 slices. Previously, I drag+dropped the data. The import time was shortened after I correctly loaded the dicom from a file. However, actual loading of the data still takes a bit of time.

Thanks, let me know if there is anything else I should try.

4

I think the main thing would be to know if there’s something odd going on either with your data or maybe something with your setup.

A 300 slice CT should not take minutes to load. I just tested a 344 slice 512x512 CT and it loaded in just a couple seconds.

Maybe you can try other datasets or other computers to triangulate on what’s going on.

5

The other thing I can think of is that the data is in a shared drive and not on the computer hard drive itself. could that be an issue of the slow loading?

May be I can copy one of the data and try loading from the hard drive.

6

Yes, that would explain it. There have been issues reported recently about OneDrive and Dropbox causing problems.

7

thanks. I made a local copy of the data on the desktop and the loading takes 2-3 minutes. I am not sure if that was the case for you or if it was instantaneous.

Might have something to do with the computer too. I probably need to investigate this further. We are doing a large number of segmentation, so every minute matters…

I am just using a remote desktop for now, may be that also could be a problem.

8

I don’t use windows myself, but I’ve been told sometimes the “Desktop” folder is hijacked by OneDrive in unexpected ways.

Loading 300 CT slices really shouldn’t take more than a few seconds.

9

Thanks I put it into the same file as the Appdata for the slicer and it loaded much faster.

Thank you,