How to open X-RAY images on a Windows 10 PC

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The Windows 10 PC is about 14 years old. I do not know what Windows Update version it’s on.

I have a friend who is going to have knee surgery.
At his original appointment, he had asked for a copy of the X-rays onto a CD which the doctor’s office was ok doing so.
— The reason is because he has some pictures on his cell phone from a few years ago of his knees he wants to compare them to today’s X-RAYS.
— I do not know what type of CD it is, what type of CD drive he has on his PC or if the CD was his.
He told me that at his home the CD didn’t open.

He brought that CD to Staples and it didn’t open for them either.
They allowed the CD to be formatted and told him it wouldn’t erase the data.
Then they tried opening the CD again and it still didn’t open from what I understand.
Tomorrow, Sat. 9/4/2021, he’s going to bring that CD to me to see if it will open for me on my Windows 10 Pro laptop.
— I have a DVD RW drive D on my laptop.
I’m under the impression that formatting a CD [actually any drive] does erase the data.
I don’t understand how he was told formatting will not erase data on that CD.

He went back to the doctor’s office and he was told they didn’t know why the CD wouldn’t open at his home.
— They tried to open the CD on one of their PC’s and it didn’t open there either.

My friend asked for a 2nd copy onto a CD and the doctor’s office had no problem doing that.
— The 2nd copy is on one of the company’s CD-R.
— I don’t know if he tried to open that 2nd CD on his PC but I do have it in my possession now.
— When I placed it into my DVD RW drive D on my laptop, the CD is recognized as a CD-R with 702 MB free of 702 MB.
— However, I don’t know if it’s my fault that the CD-R is 702 MB free of 702 MB.
— I was able to open the CD-R w/o any problem but it immediately started formatting but I immediately stopped the formatting and I think it took about 10 seconds or so before the formatting stopped.
— Is it possible that means the CD-R should have been fully formatted before the X-RAY files are copied, maybe burned, to the CD-R?

My friend being persistent as he is, went back & got a 3rd copy. Tomorrow Sat. 9/4/2021, he’s going to show it to me.
— AFAIK, he hasn’t touched it because he wants me to check it out first.

I have a few 4.7 GB DVD+RW’s that I’m not using anymore that he can have.
Would double-sided DVDs be more beneficial to try?

With that said though, I want to recommend using a 16GB USB flash drive.
— I don’t know if that will be too much space but that’s what I would consider.

Moving on how can we see the X-RAYS on whatever media is used?

I found the following information in Microsoft Community.

Subject: how to open x-ray images on my pc
how to open x-ray images on my pc – Microsoft Community

Usually, the program required is placed on the CD, if you open the CD (not run) is there a viewer of some kind?
If not then download this program:
http://www.microdicom.com/

Note: This is a non-Microsoft website. The page appears to be providing accurate, safe information. Watch out for ads on the site that may advertise products frequently classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Products). Thoroughly research any product advertised on the site before you decide to download and install it.

I tried that on the 2nd copy I mentioned above which led to immediately formatting the CD-R and which I immediately stopped the formatting.

It appears to me it’s best to fully format whatever media is to be used before copying or burning X-RAY’s to any media.
— Then use the microdicom program.
— If anyone recommends another program, I’ll certainly consider it.
— Does anyone have an idea of about how much space an X-RAY takes up approximately.
BTW, I usually fully format media anyway before projects such as creating clean installs or MSFT ISO’s.

HP EliteBook 8540w laptop Windows 10 Pro (x64)

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“They allowed the CD to be formatted and told him it wouldn’t erase the data.”  My eyebrow went up from that.  Uh no.  That doesn’t work that way.

I’m guessing you mean the hardware is 14 years old as Windows 10 itself is only six years old.  🙂

In the last few years I have noticed that when people give me cdroms/dvds that they say has data on it, it doesn’t.  Because computers don’t often ship with cdrom hardware people often don’t properly burn in cdroms.  I’d ask them to put is on a flash drive.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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cmptrgy

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perhaps they meant ‘finalized’?

oops I see some ‘later’ in this thread ‘already’ suggested this.

One more thing to try use a batch/type of CD tested on the disk drive that is going to read it.

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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I’d also specifically ask that they convert it to a jpg or tif image – a normal photo style.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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cmptrgy

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This last January my daughter tripped/stepped on an object and broke a ‘5th metatarsal’. She got the X-Rays and program on a CD, which I copied in its entirety to this computer. There are three X-ray images, and two ‘photos’ of the information and order forms that were filled out.
– 363 files, 30 folders, 274 MB

This appears to be similar to what one sees on the doctor’s computer. This took about 20 seconds to open. I would guess that what you are getting is not ‘just’ a (BMP), but a complete application along with image(s).

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cmptrgy

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I’m under the impression that formatting a CD [actually any drive] does erase the data.
I don’t understand how he was told formatting will not erase data on that CD.

CD-Rs are write once read many media. If the disc you have is a CD-RW it can be quick erased (almost all data remains on disc) or fully erased and then reused after both erasure methods like a very slow flash drive or other magnetic media.

Many issues can occur, here are several things could be wrong:

The disc your friend received could be defective. (Optical disc media decays and its more prone to failure.) (Is it a medical archive grade CD-R? These discs were usually better than consumer grade CD-Rs.) You can scan the disk with IsoBuster, read the FAQ’s they will be enough to get you started using this program.

The optical drive is defective.

The doctor’s disc creation software does not function as it should.

This one is a wild random theory: Maybe the doctor’s office supplied a disc formatted with a proprietary file system, which will not be read easily unless you or another doctor have the software that created the file system or utility to read the data.

The doctor’s disc creation program did not finish finalizing the disc (meaning no more data can be added), and some optical drives will not read a disc in that state.

The doctors disc creation program did not close the session, sometimes only the optical drive which wrote the data can read it.

The disc is empty, so Windows will ask to format those discs.

Does the dicom image viewer on the CD still require Internet Explorer?

Moving On to images storage:

Yes you can use a DVD+RW disc to store dicom images, your friend will have to try it out as some optical drives may have trouble with DVD+RW media though or vise versa (DVD-RW).

You can use a new completely formatted large 16GB flash drive for dicom files.

MicroDicom viewer should open the image files without problem. The GIMP can open dicom images. SMILI which appears to be aimed for more for professional use.

Maybe the doctor’s office can open the files without a separate viewer program on the drive.

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cmptrgy

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I would ask the doctors to test the CD after adding the images.

cheers, Paul

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wavy, cmptrgy

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Thanks everyone. There’s a lot of excellent information I can relate to when I help my friend.

HP EliteBook 8540w laptop Windows 10 Pro (x64)

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The CT discs with which I am familiar – ours is a GE system, but I suspect most are the same and there is only a few big CT manufacturers – are supplied with a DICOM  run-time viewer program that views the images but does not install anything on the computer.  The images seem to be stored in a proprietary format (my quickview program couldn’t interpret them) but the images can be exported in jpg.    Note that most likely they may not be ‘diagnostic quality’ images – the original images are diminished in size a bit for giving to the customer.

All of that should be transparent.  I concur with the others who suggest there is a technical problem.  Likely if you have 3 discs all not working on different computers, the problem is on the doctors side – though getting them to check makes sense.  My c-spine CD is only 365 mB so they should also fit on a flash drive but the doctor’s program may not be able to generate in that format and they may not be happy using your flash drive because of the possibility of malware on that ‘outside’ product.

I wouldn’t use a RW disc.   Regular cheap single write CD or DVD, and make sure they finalzie the disc prior to ejecting.

 

Good luck.

 

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Somehow I duplicated my previous post. Sorry about that.

HP EliteBook 8540w laptop Windows 10 Pro (x64)

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My friend hadn’t used any of his CD-R’s.

The first 2 CD-R’s both came from the X-RAY department: each one automatically self-formatted upon start-up.
— According to Anonymous post #2387714 “The disc is empty, so Windows will ask to format those discs”, so that might be the reason.
— One of the CD-Rs was a company CDR-R, the other one was a standard CD-R.

The 3rd CD-R came from my friend’s surgeon who will do his knees.
— The CD-R has 0 bytes free of 103 MB so that CD-R is full.
— My friend is going to have the hospital open it instead of trying it himself.
The CD-R is completely full and I’m not confident it will operate properly.
— The System File is UDF.
— What is UDF?

HP EliteBook 8540w laptop Windows 10 Pro (x64)

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UDF is Universal Disc Format, it is newer a kind of standardized file system for optical media that includes support for long filenames in any language and it has many other add features.

Various modern operating systems have driver software to read these discs, so this last CD your friend has is probably good and fit for purpose.

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cmptrgy

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PaulK’s experience matches mine. The CD I was given had the x-ray images and a program for viewing them. The images were in a proprietary image format. The only way to view them was with the included program. When I viewed the x-rays on-screen in the viewer program, I took a screenshot and saved that as a jpg file.

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