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IMHO, I don't think it's ever safe to assume that someone, even if they're in tech, would readily know what file format X is or have the right software for it. If in doubt, you should provide them the way to easily see whatever it is you want to show them, whether it's a x-ray or a hiking map or a giant party banner. When I got my scans from the radiologist, they came on a CD-ROM (remember those?). I had to dig up my old disc drive from storage, then loaded the files onto my phone. At the orthopedist, I just showed it to them right on the phone with a Android DICOM viewer. I also brought the original CD, along with the same files plus 2-3 different viewers on my laptop, juuuuust in case. There's no way I was going to risk another clinic visit, at what, $300/visit?, just because they couldn't read the images. I'd do the same anytime I was visiting another professional. I don't assume to know their tech setup or level of file format expertise... that isn't what I'm paying them for, after all. As an aside, in my brief investigation into DICOM (a format previously unknown to me before my injury), I discovered that it's actually a pretty complex format, with different viewers having pretty different UIs in terms of how they handle layers within a file (in both time and space), overlays and contrast adjustments (to emphasize/deemphasize certain artifacts, apparently), different collections and naming schemes for the same body parts, etc. Some of them were barely more usable than a JPEG viewer, while others could interpolate/extrapolate the data into a 3D point cloud and create rough anatomical models by combining collections of images from different angles. It's quite a complex system of raster imaging plus metadata, and no two viewers worked quite the same, even between the several free and/or open-source options. It reminds of the nonstandard mess that is file packaging for GIS (geographic information systems) -- a lot of power, but no simple system for organizing that power. In that sense DICOM is more like a database of radiological data that happens to be plottable in 2D (and sometimes 3D) space, rather than a simple image. If you export it to JPEG, you get a static output in time & space and lose a lot of the power of DICOM. There are a loooooooot of ways to store imaging data out in the wild, and many different versions & viewers for each format... rather than looking down on someone for not keeping up with the tech stacks du jour, why not just help them get what they need to do their job more effectively? Especially when they're working to heal you. |
[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/amide/