How to install pydicom¶
Note
We recommend installing into a virtual environment, which is an isolated Python environment that allows you to install packages without admin privileges. See the virtual environments tutorial on how to create and manage virtual environments.
Install the official release¶
pydicom, being a Python library, requires Python. If you’re not sure whether or not your version of Python is supported, check this table.
Install using pip¶
pydicom is available on PyPi, the official third-party Python software repository. The simplest way to install from PyPi is using pip with the command:
pip install pydicom
You may need to use this instead, depending on your operating system:
python -m pip install pydicom
You can also perform an offline installation by
downloading and installing
one of the release *.whl files. For example, with the v2.0 release:
pip install pydicom-2.0.0-py3-none-any.whl
Install using conda¶
pydicom is also available for conda at conda-forge:
conda install -c conda-forge pydicom
Downloading example/test DICOM files¶
To keep the package size small, a number of the larger DICOM files are not distributed with pydicom and are instead kept in the pydicom-data repository. To get the complete set of testing and example files you can either install the pydicom-data repository:
pip install git+https://github.com/pydicom/pydicom-data
Or download the missing files to the local cache (after installing pydicom):
python -c "import pydicom; pydicom.data.fetch_data_files()"
Install the optional libraries¶
If you’re going to be manipulating pixel data then NumPy is required.
Using pip:
pip install numpy
Through conda:
conda install numpy
To decode JPEG compressed pixel data one or more additional libraries will need to be installed. See this page for a list of which library is needed to handle a given JPEG format, as specified by the dataset’s (0002,0010) Transfer Syntax UID value.
Installing Pillow¶
Pillow is a popular Python imaging library that can handle the decompression of some JPEG and JPEG 2000 images.
Using pip; you may need to make sure that the libjpeg (for JPEG) and openjpeg (for JPEG 2000) libraries are installed beforehand:
pip install pillow
Through conda:
conda install -c conda-forge openjpeg jpeg
conda install pillow
Installing CharPyLS¶
CharPyLS is a Python interface to the CharLS C++ library and can decompress JPEG-LS images.
Using pip:
pip install cython
pip install git+https://github.com/Who8MyLunch/CharPyLS
Through conda:
conda install cython
pip install git+https://github.com/Who8MyLunch/CharPyLS
Installing GDCM¶
GDCM is a C++ library for working with DICOM datasets that can decompress JPEG, JPEG-LS and JPEG 2000 images.
Unfortunately there’s no easy way to install the Python GDCM bindings
using pip. This page
has instructions for installing in a virtual environment in Ubuntu
19.04+ or Debian Buster+ using the python3-gdcm package.
Through conda:
conda install gdcm -c conda-forge
Install the development version¶
To install a snapshot of the latest code (the master branch) from
GitHub:
pip install git+https://github.com/pydicom/pydicom.git
The master branch is under active development and while it is usually
stable, it may have undocumented changes or bugs.
If you want to keep up-to-date with the latest code, make sure you have
Git installed and then clone the master
branch (this will create a pydicom directory in your current directory):
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/pydicom/pydicom.git
Then install using pip in editable (-e) mode:
pip install -e pydicom/
When you want to update your copy of the source code, run git pull from
within the pydicom directory and Git will download and apply any changes.