I got a CD from the hospital that is a head CD scan.
I am completely new to medical imaging. What I would like to do perform a volume rendering of the CT scan.
It is in DICOMDIR format. How and where would I start?
From messing about with various tools I get the feeling that I need to extract each series into DICOM format. Is this correct and if so how would I do it?
Unless you were given the volume data your rendering will be disappointing at best. Many institutions still acquire head CT's in separate "step-slices", and not as volumes so here you will have significant 'stepping' artifact.
Even if it was acquired with volume data, unless they transferred all the data to your CD, you will still be stuck with only the processed 'slab' or 'slice' images.
The best way to do a volume rendering is to actually have the volume data. "Slice image" data has most of the information dumbed down and removed. You are just getting 20 or 30 images in 256 x 256 x (8 or 16 bit greyscale) array data.