Extending PowerPoint with DICOM image support.

Abstract

Although PowerPoint has become a ubiquitous presentation tool in medical imaging, it does not support the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) standard. Users must go through a laborious conversion process that includes guessing the appropriate brightness and contrast to convert 16-bit DICOM images into 8-bit formats. A PowerPoint add-in was developed that incorporates features of a DICOM viewer into a presentation. Users can interactively manipulate large series of 16-bit images in stack mode with scroll, crop, zoom, and window width and level functions, as well as sort through images by location or series. Multiple DICOM image series can be placed on a single slide, and one can interactively scroll through stacks of images during a presentation to demonstrate imaging findings. The problem created by the varying contrast and brightness of different projector systems is overcome by interactively adjusting the image window level during presentations. Bone and lung window views can be shown without having to create separate images. Combining DICOM images into stacks as part of a PowerPoint presentation can result in a more effective and higher-quality presentation of medical images.