Sorting Images in the Stack

You can sort the images in the stack by image number, image position, temporal position, or image time.

To sort the images in the stack:

  1. From the Stack tool menu in the toolbar, choose one of the following sort types.

    Choose this:

    To sort by:

    Sort by Image Number (Default)

    The number that identifies the image in the series.

    The Image Number sort uses the Instance Number tag (0020, 0013). If a series has two images with the same Instance Number tag, InteleViewer uses the Acquisition Number tag (0020, 0012) to sort the series.

    Sort by Image Position

    The x, y, and z coordinates of the upper left-hand corner of the image. The direction of the axes is defined by the patient's orientation.

    The Image Position sort uses the Image Position Patient tag (0020, 0032).

    Sort by Temporal Position

    The temporal resolution, which relates to the duration of the acquisition time of a single frame of a dynamic process, for example, cine imaging.

    When sorting two-dimensional datasets by temporal position, InteleViewer first sorts the images by time and then by instance number.

    The Temporal Position sort uses the Temporal Position Identifier tag (0020, 0100).

    Sort by Image Time

    The date and time that the images were created.

    The Image Time sort uses both the Content Date (0008, 0023) and Content Time (0008, 0033).

  2. To sort in reverse order, choose Reverse Sort from the Stack tool menu.

    The Reverse Sort option applies to the current sort type only. If you change the sort type, you must reapply the Reverse Sort option.

    For example, if you select Sort by Image Number, enabling Reverse Sort displays the images in descending order rather than in ascending order.

    Reverse Sort also reverses the image numbers that are displayed in the text overlay. For example, in a series with 25 images, image 1 becomes image 25, image 2 becomes image 24, and so on. This can cause confusion when you refer to specific image numbers in correspondences with radiologists that are applying a different sorting order. Instead of referencing an image by image number, you can use the image Instance Number tag, which if valid, is unique for each image and does not change based on the sorting order. To view the image Instance Number, you can add the Instance Number tag to the text overlay by using the modality user preferences Text Overlay tab.