Opening dcm files with Surface Scan Mesh IOD and Surface Scan Point Cloud

[egejcb]

Is your feature request related to a problem? (optional)

Currently, when Weasis encounters a DICOM file with the Surface Scan Mesh IOD or the Surface Scan Point Cloud IOD, the parsing process fails during initialization.

When loading such files it leads to generic errors such as “Cannot read DICOM file” with loag output *INFO * [AWT-EventQueue-0] org.weasis.dicom.explorer.LoadDicom: End of loading DICOM locally

Description of the new feature/enhancement

The Surface Scan Mesh and Point Cloud IODs are part of the DICOM standard and might be generated by optical surface scanners or post-processing applications.
Requested Feature: Implement support for parsing and rendering Surface Scan Mesh IOD in Weasis, Provide meaningful error handling when unsupported or malformed surface mesh data is encountered, instead of generic failures, Enable visualization of 3D surface mesh data within the existing 3D viewer or develop specialized viewers if necessary, Supporting these IODs would greatly enhance Weasis's functionality for clinical and research users working with advanced 3D imaging data.

Proposed technical implementation details (optional)

No response

Describe alternatives you've considered (optional)

Current workaround involves converting surface meshes to STL or supported segmentation formats for visualization.
3D Slicer, ParaVIEW

Additional context (optional)

No response

[nroduit]

Thanks for the detailed report.

Weasis is primarily a clinical DICOM viewer, not an advanced 3D application like 3D Slicer or ParaView. Because of that focus, full support for Surface Scan Mesh IOD and Surface Scan Point Cloud IOD is not currently implemented.

What that means practically:
We do not support rendering arbitrary 3D meshes in the 3D view today. Adding that would require significant architectural work (3D engine integration, memory/mesh handling, UI controls, export/transform operations, testing across large datasets, etc.).
There was an experimental prototype of an STL viewer at one point, but it was never finalized and not part of any released branch.
Given the scope and maintenance cost, this is not a high priority for the project right now. If implemented, it would likely be a viewer-only feature.