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For sonographers

What to export, so the scan can become a keepsake

A parent has asked for their baby's 3D data. What the machine sends by default is almost always flat pictures, which look right, open fine everywhere, and cannot be turned into a new portrait or a physical keepsake. Here is the difference, and what to send instead.

The one thing that matters

A volume is what the probe actually recorded: a block of data with depth in it, which can be turned, re-lit, cut away from a hand and made into a keepsake. A flat export is the picture the machine already made from that volume: one angle, one light, no depth. Both are commonly labeled 3D, both open in any DICOM viewer, and only one contains what is needed to make the keepsake.

On most machines the difference is a single setting at export time, usually worded as Volume or Rawdata rather than Normal. Send it that way and there is nothing else to do.

What a good export looks like

If it comes back wrong

Flat pictures, or a cine loop
This is the usual export: images with no depth, or a video of them. On the machine, look for the setting that sends 3D/4D as Volume or Rawdata rather than Normal, then export again.
A compressed Voluson .vol
This IS a volume, so the scan itself is fine and nothing needs redoing with the parent, and the studio opens the compression a Voluson writes. If the check says this one is saved with a kind of compression the studio cannot read yet: Re-export it from 4D View with compression turned off, or save it from the machine as uncompressed.
A whole study folder or a zip
Send it anyway. We will read what is inside and say which of the above it is, rather than guessing from the file name.

Check a file before you send it

Drop the file below. The check runs right here, with no sign-in: it reads only the first few kilobytes, uploads nothing, and takes about a second to say which of the above you have. That is worth doing while the parent is still in the room.

Drop an export here

A .vol or .4dv, a .dcm, an .mvl, or whatever the machine wrote to the USB stick. Drop the whole DICOM folder or its zip if that is what you have. Nothing is uploaded.

Got a whole DICOM folder?

A file that does not open, or a machine not listed here? Contact us. Knowing which machine wrote it is the useful part.