SharpDicom

A pure .NET DICOM toolkit built from scratch with zero external DICOM library dependencies.

Features

• Pure .NET - No fo-dicom or other DICOM library dependencies
• High Performance - Span-based parsing, minimal allocations, SIMD optimizations
• Modern .NET - Async/await, IAsyncEnumerable, nullable reference types
• Multi-target - netstandard2.0, net8.0, net9.0, net10.0
• Streaming - Process large files without loading entirely into memory
• Comprehensive - Full DICOM Part 10 file support

Installation

dotnet add package SharpDicom

Quick Start

using SharpDicom;
using SharpDicom.Data;

// Read a DICOM file
var file = await DicomFile.OpenAsync("image.dcm");

// Access metadata
var patientName = file.Dataset.GetString(DicomTag.PatientName);
var modality = file.Dataset.GetString(DicomTag.Modality);

// Work with sequences
var sequence = file.Dataset.GetSequence(DicomTag.ReferencedStudySequence);
foreach (var item in sequence.Items)
{
    var uid = item.GetString(DicomTag.ReferencedSOPInstanceUID);
}

// Write a DICOM file
var dataset = new DicomDataset();
dataset.Add(new DicomStringElement(DicomTag.PatientName, DicomVR.PN, "Doe^John"));
dataset.Add(new DicomStringElement(DicomTag.Modality, DicomVR.CS, "CT"));

var newFile = new DicomFile(dataset);
await newFile.SaveAsync("output.dcm");

Capabilities

Feature	Status
File reading (Part 10)	Complete
File writing	Complete
Explicit/Implicit VR	Complete
Little/Big Endian	Complete
Sequences (nested)	Complete
Pixel data (native)	Complete
Pixel data (lazy loading)	Complete
RLE codec	Complete
Private tags	Complete
Character encoding	Complete
Validation profiles	Complete

Transfer Syntaxes

Supported for reading and writing:

• Implicit VR Little Endian
• Explicit VR Little Endian
• Explicit VR Big Endian (retired)
• RLE Lossless

Configuration

// Strict parsing - reject invalid files
var strict = await DicomFile.OpenAsync("file.dcm", DicomReaderOptions.Strict);

// Lenient parsing - recover from common errors
var lenient = await DicomFile.OpenAsync("file.dcm", DicomReaderOptions.Lenient);

// Custom options
var options = new DicomReaderOptions
{
    PixelDataHandling = PixelDataHandling.LazyLoad,
    MaxSequenceDepth = 10,
    ValidationProfile = ValidationProfile.Strict
};

Building

dotnet build
dotnet test

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.

For alternate licensing terms (commercial/proprietary use), contact the author.