Support DICOM VIDEO

[opennog]

Hi

I'm starting to work with DICOM VIDEOS such as the one attached, but in multiple cases it seems pydicom is not able to read the data.
video_heart.zip

I wanted to ask if you could give support to such type of files. At the time being I'm getting the following error with pydicom==2.3.1

ds.pixel_array
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/oscar/dev/qmenta_imaging/venv38/lib/python3.8/site-packages/IPython/core/interactiveshell.py", line 3508, in run_code
    exec(code_obj, self.user_global_ns, self.user_ns)
  File "<ipython-input-2-967c46e3e5fc>", line 1, in <module>
    ds.pixel_array
  File "/home/oscar/dev/qmenta_imaging/venv38/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pydicom/dataset.py", line 1955, in pixel_array
    self.convert_pixel_data()
  File "/home/oscar/dev/qmenta_imaging/venv38/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pydicom/dataset.py", line 1512, in convert_pixel_data
    self._convert_pixel_data_without_handler()
  File "/home/oscar/dev/qmenta_imaging/venv38/lib/python3.8/site-packages/pydicom/dataset.py", line 1564, in _convert_pixel_data_without_handler
    raise NotImplementedError(
NotImplementedError: Unable to decode pixel data with a transfer syntax UID of '1.2.840.10008.1.2.4.103' (MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 BD-compatible High Profile / Level 4.1) as there are no pixel data handlers available that support it. Please see the pydicom documentation for information on supported transfer syntaxes

Best.

[mrbean-bremen]

The problem is that pydicom relies on third-party packages to decode compressed files, and these support only a limited number of transfer syntaxes, video codecs not among them.
I agree that it makes sense to also support video transfer syntaxes, but for this we need to have a suitable Python package with a compatible license that is able to decode them and has a suitable interface to write an adapter (image data handler) for pydicom. We certainly won't write a decoder ourselves.
This is not something that will be done in the near future IMHO (except someone turns up with a suitable PR...), so if that is urgent for you I'm afraid yiu are out of luck.

[scaramallion]

Just to clarify, the Dataset.pixel_array property is unable to return the data as a numpy array, however the raw video data stream is still available in Dataset.PixelData. You should be able to convert that to a regular video file and do with it as you wish.

[opennog]

Thank you very much for your input. I'll see what I can do and will let you know if I find a decoder.
Best!