Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Dicom Unit Symbol Convention

When you use units in calculation or conversion you can express that in Dicom Calculator and Dicom Document in one of the the followoing three manners:

1. Unit symbols without any braces - these are the unit symbols standarised by International System of Unit (SI).

Example:
m. - metre
ft. - feet
mi. - miles

2. Unit symbols with curly braces {}
- these are not standard symbols but widely used.

Example:
{inch.} - inches
{km.} -kilometres
{cm.} - centimetres

3. Unit symbols with square braces []
- these are non-standard symbols and also not widely used.

Example:
[fath.] - fathom
[micron.] - micro metre

In all of the cases above use of period (.) next to the unit symbol is optional. Also the use of {} or [] are optional.When the option "File > Preferences... > Calculation and Editing > Check keywords" is checked on (by default it is on) any unit symbol written is automatically reformatted in Dicom Calculator and Dicom Document.

That means you can write {inch.} in any of the following manner:
inch
inch
{inch}
{inch.}
and even [inch] or [inch.]

Dicom will reformat to its standard convention - {inch.}

Dicom unit conversion calculator is available here for free download.