# Trouble reading a DICOM MRI series

**URL:** <https://discourse.slicer.org/t/trouble-reading-a-dicom-mri-series/8505>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [September 20, 2019, 11:53am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/trouble-reading-a-dicom-mri-series/8505 "2019-09-20T11:53:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nathan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Nathan](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/Nathan)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2019, 11:53am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/trouble-reading-a-dicom-mri-series/8505/1 "2019-09-20T11:53:32Z")

</div>

Operating system: Windows 7  
Slicer version: 4.5, 4.8  
Expected behavior: Reads in DICOM MRI series as a single volume  
Actual behavior: Reads each image into an individual volume

Hi,

This MRI series is not being read in as a volume. Each image is being put into an individual volume. Any ideas on what’s going on and how to fix it?

> **[005.zip](https://www.dropbox.com/s/hol19w2207f7ls8/005.zip?dl=0)**
>
> Shared with Dropbox

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Chris\_Rorden](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/chris_rorden/32/4073_2.png) [@Chris\_Rorden](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/Chris_Rorden)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2019, 1:31pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/trouble-reading-a-dicom-mri-series/8505/2 "2019-09-20T13:31:59Z")

</div>

These slices are not combined because the DICOM headers report they are from different studies (0020,000d) and from different series (0020,000e). I would check the providence of these images, and see if you can get earlier copies of the images before these tags were manipulated.

Based on 0002,0013, I suspect these images were mangled by a Matlab script (potentially attempting to anonymize data). The DICOM format is extremely complex, and this makes DICOM images fragile to manipulation. Personally, I am a fan of [gdcmanon](http://gdcm.sourceforge.net/html/gdcmanon.html).

> (0002,0013) SH [MATLAB IPT 7.1] # 14, 1 ImplementationVersionName

Instance Number 1:

```
(0020,000d) UI [1.3.6.1.4.1.9590.100.1.2.380037498713055046739759443493873218136] # 64, 1 StudyInstanceUID
(0020,000e) UI [1.3.6.1.4.1.9590.100.1.2.331408360012808881138554615400916651736] # 64, 1 SeriesInstanceUID

```

Instance Number 2:

```
(0020,000d) UI [1.3.6.1.4.1.9590.100.1.2.222023342810310160709387564850599174001] # 64, 1 StudyInstanceUID
(0020,000e) UI [1.3.6.1.4.1.9590.100.1.2.385511264811362958821958401890266751484] # 64, 1 SeriesInstanceUID

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nathan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Nathan](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/Nathan)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2019, 1:42pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/trouble-reading-a-dicom-mri-series/8505/3 "2019-09-20T13:42:33Z")

</div>

Hmm - interesting. I get the same behavior with the original non-anonomized images. They are from another site, so I don’t know about how they were obtained.

I can try changing the DICOM fields in Matlab. Would changing (0020,000d) and (0020,000e) be enough for Slicer?

I could also try saving them in another format (nrrd, nifti?). I would need to save the spatial information.

Thanks,  
Nathan

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nathan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Nathan](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/Nathan)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2019, 7:07pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/trouble-reading-a-dicom-mri-series/8505/4 "2019-09-20T19:07:52Z")

</div>

That fixed it.

Thanks again!