# Essential dicom tags for mrconvert

**URL:** <https://community.mrtrix.org/t/essential-dicom-tags-for-mrconvert/382>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [August 10, 2016, 4:25am UTC](https://community.mrtrix.org/t/essential-dicom-tags-for-mrconvert/382 "2016-08-10T04:25:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![jdtournier](https://community.mrtrix.org/user_avatar/community.mrtrix.org/jdtournier/32/2594_2.png) [@jdtournier](https://community.mrtrix.org/u/jdtournier)\
**Post date:** [August 10, 2016, 9:59am UTC](https://community.mrtrix.org/t/essential-dicom-tags-for-mrconvert/382/3 "2016-08-10T09:59:37Z")

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By the way, if you’re really interested in how _MRtrix3_ handles these things, the first place to look would be the [`DICOM::QuickScan` class](https://github.com/MRtrix3/mrtrix3/blob/master/lib/file/dicom/quick_scan.cpp) - that will tell you which entries are actually read initially to sort the data, prior to doing a deeper scan through the particular series to be loaded.

Briefly, the process is to scan through all files in the specified folder (recursively if nested folders are found) using the [`QuickScan`](https://github.com/MRtrix3/mrtrix3/blob/master/lib/file/dicom/quick_scan.h#L25-L35) class, which only reads those tags necessary to work out the contents of the folder. It then sorts these small entries into a tree structure by Patient / Study / Series / Image ([code here](https://github.com/MRtrix3/mrtrix3/blob/master/lib/file/dicom/tree.cpp#L86-L108)). The code then allows the user to select one or more series ([code here](https://github.com/MRtrix3/mrtrix3/blob/master/lib/file/dicom/select_cmdline.cpp)), and then performs a full scan of the files in that series to grab the information required to read the images as such - this is done via the [Image & Frame classes](https://github.com/MRtrix3/mrtrix3/blob/master/lib/file/dicom/image.h), which read a lot more tags than the original quick scan ([code here](https://github.com/MRtrix3/mrtrix3/blob/master/lib/file/dicom/image.cpp#L29-L242)).

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_[View the full topic](https://community.mrtrix.org/t/essential-dicom-tags-for-mrconvert/382)._