A DICOM File Input Node is a source of DICOM files on the local or network file system that are to be processed by the Nexus Pipeline. This is the starting point for importing DICOM files into a system.
The DICOM file input node is designed to stream DICOM files from a local or network file system. Due to the streaming nature of the process, the input can be highly parallel by specify multiple threads to handle the import process. The importer has different modes of operation, one of which is to read only the DICOM headers. This can be used with a database node to quickly index all the files on a file system to allow them to be queried using DICOM or information to be mined from the SQL database. The node can be configured to run once over a source of data to process it (most often used as part of a PACS migration) or in a continuous mode where the node monitors for new files and processes them before optionally removing them from the import location.