DICOMscope Setup

Last Edit: 2023.11.26

Debian / Ubuntu

Arch / Manjaro

Overview

Install DICOMscope on a Linux system to view DICOM files and images.

Assumptions

Logged in as administrative user.

Update

Before getting started, update package repositories. Consider upgrading them as well for the latest patches.

# Debian
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

# Arch
sudo pacman -Syy
sudo pacman -Syu

Install DICOMscope

Install DICOMscope from the system repository.

On Debian systems, install the dicomscope package.

# Debian
sudo apt install dicomscope

On Arch systems, install the dicomscope-bin package.

# Arch
sudo pacman -S dicomscope-bin

Desktop Entry

To easily launch DICOMscope from the desktop or start menu, add a desktop entry. If the system being configured already has a DICOMscope entry, skip this step.

Start by creating a dicomscope.desktop file in the /usr/share/applications directory.

sudo nano /usr/share/applications/dicomscope.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=DICOMscope
Exec=/usr/bin/dicomscope
#Icon=/usr/share/icons/dicomscope.png
Terminal=false
Categories=Graphics;Science;

Icon

Download the DICOMscope logo from their website using wget. Move it into the shared icons directory on the system.

The following command will download the DICOMscope logo, rename it to dicomscope.png, set the owner and group as root, set the permissions to 644, and finally move it to the shared icons directory /usr/share/icons.

wget https://nero.offis.de/static/images/DICOM_logo_2022.png -O /tmp/dicomscope.png \
&& sudo chown root:root /tmp/dicomscope.png \
&& sudo chmod 644 /tmp/dicomscope.png \
&& sudo mv /tmp/dicomscope.png /usr/share/icons/dicomscope.png

Uncomment or add the icon definition in the dicomscope.desktop file.

Icon=/usr/share/icons/dicomscope.png

Refresh the system icons for the desktop entry to use the added icon.

sudo update-desktop-database

Usage

Desktop

If a desktop entry was created, launch DICOMscope from the system application launcher.

DICOMscope desktop entry.

Terminal

Launch DICOMscope from a terminal using the dicomscope command.

dicomscope

The application will notify you its starting and request a wait. The DICOMscope applicationi will launch in another window.

starting DICOMscope
please wait...

Errors

LibTIFF

The installation location of LibTIFF may differ from what DICOMscope expects. The following code block demonstrates the error, it cannot find libtiff.so.5.

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: /usr/lib/jni/libjInterface.so: libtiff.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
        at java.base/jdk.internal.loader.NativeLibraries.load(Native Method)
        at java.base/jdk.internal.loader.NativeLibraries$NativeLibraryImpl.open(NativeLibraries.java:331)
        at java.base/jdk.internal.loader.NativeLibraries.loadLibrary(NativeLibraries.java:197)
        at java.base/jdk.internal.loader.NativeLibraries.loadLibrary(NativeLibraries.java:139)
        at java.base/jdk.internal.loader.NativeLibraries.findFromPaths(NativeLibraries.java:259)
        at java.base/jdk.internal.loader.NativeLibraries.loadLibrary(NativeLibraries.java:251)
        at java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadLibrary(ClassLoader.java:2451)
        at java.base/java.lang.Runtime.loadLibrary0(Runtime.java:916)
        at java.base/java.lang.System.loadLibrary(System.java:2059)
        at main.MainContext.<clinit>(MainContext.java:58)
        at dicomscope.DICOMscope.main(DICOMscope.java:91)

Resolve this problem by creating a symbolic link from libtiff.so.5 to the existing LibTiff installation, /usr/lib/libtiff.so.

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libtiff.so /usr/lib/libtiff.so.5

References

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