Slicer can read a number of different image formats, including: GE Genesis, GE Signa, DICOM (digital imaging and communications in medicine), and no-header format. You can use the following sequence to load your data into Slicer:
  1. Type the command:
  2. On the Main menu, click Data.
  3. Click Add Volume. The Props panel should appear:

Slicer browser interface

If your data is in DICOM format:
  1. Click DICOM (some of the letters may not be visible).
  2. See Using DICOM data with Slicer.
For other data formats:
  1. Click Browse. Slicer will open the directory where you started Slicer from.
  2. Double-click one of the images that you want to work on, and then click Apply.
    Slicer now tries to figure out what kind of data you have so it can properly load and orient your data. If it succeeds, Slicer will load your data and you will see your images. If it does not succeed, Slicer will display a message asking you to enter the header information manually and the following panel will appear:

Default Slicer header parameters

The default parameters above are the minimum that Slicer requires to load your data. Slicer uses these parameters to determine the geometry of your data. For example, if you have 60 MR images and the parameters for your data are the same as the default parameters, then Slicer would know the following about your data: These default parameters are commonly used, but you will need to know the correct values for your data to view your data properly. Most of these parameters should be self-explanatory, except the File Pattern. This is the pattern for naming the files, expressed in C language syntax. For example, a file named skin.001 has a pattern of %s.%03d, and a file named skin.1 has %s.%d for a pattern. The default is "%s.%03d". This means that Slicer is able to read images numbered with 3 digits after the decimal point (xxx.001 to xxx.999). If your images are instead numbered xxx.1 to xxx.9, you will need to change the File Pattern to "%s.%d". When you have entered all the parameters correctly for your data, click Apply and Slicer will load the data.

Please note that when you have finished editing your data, the segmented/edited images that Slicer writes out do not contain any header information. Slicer encodes this header information into a MRML (Medical Reality Modeling Language) file when you save your scene. This file describes the volumes that you have loaded into Slicer and how you have modified them using Slicer's tools.

In most cases, you will want to load more than one dataset. To load more data, simply repeat the procedure above. Slicer typically will display up to three data sets at one time: a foreground, a background, and a segmented dataset. When the Data tab is active, the data sets that comprise the current scene appear in the MRML File Contents (Current Scene) panel. This looks like:

Description of Scene

If some of your data is incorrect or you want to rearrange the order in which your data is loaded, you can move or delete it.
  1. Click on the offending data.
  2. Then right-click.
  3. Select from the menu to either delete or cut and paste the data.