How do I convert the contents of a CD to a zip?
April 8, 2015 3:20 PM Subscribe
These CDs consists of radiology CT scans. One of them seems to use something called INFINITT. I want to convert the scans to a zip file so I can send them to someone. I have no idea how to do this.
What you're looking for, particularly if the disk has a proprietary viewer on it, is an ISO, not a zip file. Zips contain the directory structure, but an ISO contains the disk's structure information. There's a lot of CD to ISO software out there, I use IMGBurn to make ISOs. You can then zip the ISO using regular ZIP utilities; the person you're sending it to then can burn the ISO to disk, or use an ISO mounting software like DaemonTools to read the ISO directly on their PC without burning it to disk.
posted by AzraelBrown at 3:46 PM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by AzraelBrown at 3:46 PM on April 8, 2015 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: ok. BTW I have windows 7 if that matters at all.
posted by manderin at 4:28 PM on April 8, 2015
posted by manderin at 4:28 PM on April 8, 2015
After doing a bit of poking (using eatcake's info), DICOM is pretty much just an image file format, so these CDs are not necessarily anything special, like a (say) old-style PhotoCD would be. (There's a bunch of info on it here, along with some alternate DICOM readers and such too.) Given this the easiest way to pull all of this stuff into a Zip file would be to just create a folder, select everything on the CD, and drag it into the folder. Once that's done you can right-click the folder you made and hit Compressed Folder on the Send To menu. (You can test it by copying everything to separate folders, one for each CD and maybe even named for each CD, and then trying to run the Infinitt viewer from there too.) You will end up with one Zip file per CD. Typically, if the CD contains just regular computer data, as these seem to, just having the files in folders organized the way they were is good enough usually to make things work. Test it out beforehand though - you'll need to spend the time copying the files anyway before you can zip them up, so if you can test it before making the zip files you'll save some time if it doesn't work.
Alternatively, you could potentially use IrfanView to batch-convert the images to something more normal, like JPEG, and then zip those up and send those off, depending on who's the ultimate recipient of the images. (So, this would not be a good option if you're sending them to a doctor who'll need to manipulate them, for example.) That said, outside of saying you can do this - IrfanView has a plugin for DICOM and a whole bunch of other image formats, and it does do bulk operations - I can't really help much.
posted by mrg at 5:13 PM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
Alternatively, you could potentially use IrfanView to batch-convert the images to something more normal, like JPEG, and then zip those up and send those off, depending on who's the ultimate recipient of the images. (So, this would not be a good option if you're sending them to a doctor who'll need to manipulate them, for example.) That said, outside of saying you can do this - IrfanView has a plugin for DICOM and a whole bunch of other image formats, and it does do bulk operations - I can't really help much.
posted by mrg at 5:13 PM on April 8, 2015 [1 favorite]
There's a note about the DICOM format here that's worth looking at. By definition, medical images are many and gigantic because they're used for diagnosis. The compression tricks that we're all used to with standard JPGs and whatnot work because they surrender data to shrink the overall size.
If your goal is to make the contents of the CD smaller and easier to send, you may not get the results you're looking for by just dropping them into a zip file, though you may be able to extract JPGs from the archive and use those. What I'm getting at is that it might just be easier to duplicate the CDs and drop them in the mail, especially if the recipient is a doctor.
Medical images are an interesting IT problem to solve. They're colossal, there are usually tons of them for each study, you have to move them around frequently across networks, and you have to store them for a long, long time...but you also need to be able to recall them quickly if necessary. Figuring out ways to do all of that efficiently and cost-effectively can be gigantic pain in the ass.
posted by jquinby at 4:25 AM on April 9, 2015
If your goal is to make the contents of the CD smaller and easier to send, you may not get the results you're looking for by just dropping them into a zip file, though you may be able to extract JPGs from the archive and use those. What I'm getting at is that it might just be easier to duplicate the CDs and drop them in the mail, especially if the recipient is a doctor.
Medical images are an interesting IT problem to solve. They're colossal, there are usually tons of them for each study, you have to move them around frequently across networks, and you have to store them for a long, long time...but you also need to be able to recall them quickly if necessary. Figuring out ways to do all of that efficiently and cost-effectively can be gigantic pain in the ass.
posted by jquinby at 4:25 AM on April 9, 2015
This a dumb way, but the way I've always turned things into zip/rar files: what I would do is copy all the files from the disc into a folder on your desktop. Then I would right-click on the folder, select "compress and email" and then click OK and let it turn the folder into a zip. Microsoft Outlook will pop up, and if like me you don't actually have an Outlook account, just X out of the email draft. The zip file you created will still be on your desktop, so you can just attach that as normal to an email in your preferred email program, like Gmail.
There is a chance, however, that these files may be too big to send them all in an email. I'm guessing these scans will be high resolution. I think Gmail's limit is like 25MB. If it's way over, I personally would use Dropbox and send a download link in that situation.
posted by AppleTurnover at 11:14 AM on April 9, 2015
There is a chance, however, that these files may be too big to send them all in an email. I'm guessing these scans will be high resolution. I think Gmail's limit is like 25MB. If it's way over, I personally would use Dropbox and send a download link in that situation.
posted by AppleTurnover at 11:14 AM on April 9, 2015
I'm a long-time PACS admin for a department of radiology.
> I want to convert the scans to a zip file so I can send them to someone.
This project pushes a HIPAA button for me due to years of indoctrination. I assume they are CT scans of you, right? I mean they're part of your medical record, that you have a right to reveal if you choose? If so, cool, forget I asked.
In the course of my PACS admin career the problem of proprietary-format CDs that can only be viewed with a certain vendor's viewer has gotten better but has NOT gone away entirely. Even some that claim to be DICOM format really aren't completely so. I agree with AzraelBrown that your best bet is an .iso file that most CD-burning software (including very good free ones like ImgBurn) can extract from your existing CDs and then burn to blank CDs, making identical copies with images, patient info, and viewing software (if there is any.) You can email the .iso files to your recipient, or put them up on sites like Dropbox and send your recipient links to the files if you find they're too big for email, as you probably will. (A few years back we had to go to DVDs for things like ultra-high-rez 1600-slice mammography MRIs.)
N.b. your recipient is going to have to be rather more than just computer-literate for this to work as hoped. Heh, you may end up having to do telephone support.
As for putting an .iso into a .zip, you won't get any size reduction to speak of (the images account for almost all of the file size, and they're already compressed--jpeg lossless. They aren't gonna get smaller.) But at least the .zip format allows you to password-protect the files and inform your recipient of the passwords separately, rather than just sending your perhaps highly sensitive medical information openly over the public internet.
This would still not be nearly secure enough for a hospital dealing with other people's medical info, though. Our HIPAA compliance officer (VP rank) would have a major attack of the vapors right before throwing a major fit. For places we routinely sent radiology studies to (e.g. night radiologists off-site) we built always-up VPN tunnels to them so I could transfer studies to them as easily as I could ship them around in-house, protected from prying eyes locally by our firewall-DMZ-firewall arrangements and on the net by the VPN encryption.)
Frankly, if it was my medical records in question and I wanted to send them to a far-distant doctor for her/his opinion I would burn copies of the CDs as described, keep the originals for myself, send the physical copies via USPS, certified mail, return receipt requested, and depend for protection on federal mail law. The feds really don't like people intercepting other people's mail and pretty much everyone knows that. I know, $$, but I would consider it worth the expense.
posted by jfuller at 2:40 PM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
> I want to convert the scans to a zip file so I can send them to someone.
This project pushes a HIPAA button for me due to years of indoctrination. I assume they are CT scans of you, right? I mean they're part of your medical record, that you have a right to reveal if you choose? If so, cool, forget I asked.
In the course of my PACS admin career the problem of proprietary-format CDs that can only be viewed with a certain vendor's viewer has gotten better but has NOT gone away entirely. Even some that claim to be DICOM format really aren't completely so. I agree with AzraelBrown that your best bet is an .iso file that most CD-burning software (including very good free ones like ImgBurn) can extract from your existing CDs and then burn to blank CDs, making identical copies with images, patient info, and viewing software (if there is any.) You can email the .iso files to your recipient, or put them up on sites like Dropbox and send your recipient links to the files if you find they're too big for email, as you probably will. (A few years back we had to go to DVDs for things like ultra-high-rez 1600-slice mammography MRIs.)
N.b. your recipient is going to have to be rather more than just computer-literate for this to work as hoped. Heh, you may end up having to do telephone support.
As for putting an .iso into a .zip, you won't get any size reduction to speak of (the images account for almost all of the file size, and they're already compressed--jpeg lossless. They aren't gonna get smaller.) But at least the .zip format allows you to password-protect the files and inform your recipient of the passwords separately, rather than just sending your perhaps highly sensitive medical information openly over the public internet.
This would still not be nearly secure enough for a hospital dealing with other people's medical info, though. Our HIPAA compliance officer (VP rank) would have a major attack of the vapors right before throwing a major fit. For places we routinely sent radiology studies to (e.g. night radiologists off-site) we built always-up VPN tunnels to them so I could transfer studies to them as easily as I could ship them around in-house, protected from prying eyes locally by our firewall-DMZ-firewall arrangements and on the net by the VPN encryption.)
Frankly, if it was my medical records in question and I wanted to send them to a far-distant doctor for her/his opinion I would burn copies of the CDs as described, keep the originals for myself, send the physical copies via USPS, certified mail, return receipt requested, and depend for protection on federal mail law. The feds really don't like people intercepting other people's mail and pretty much everyone knows that. I know, $$, but I would consider it worth the expense.
posted by jfuller at 2:40 PM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]
Oops, AzraelBrown already provided a link to ImgBurn. Well, consider it a double reccie.
posted by jfuller at 2:55 PM on April 9, 2015
posted by jfuller at 2:55 PM on April 9, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
What computer are you using? Mac/Windows etc? There are different ways to extract the contents of a disc to a zip file. But regardless of which you use you'd have to still include the viewing software.
Or.....I was also going to suggest that you can yourself view the images and just save the images as screen captures but for a CT (that's on 2 CD's) you're talking thousands of images so that wouldn't be practical.
posted by eatcake at 3:35 PM on April 8, 2015