image is constructed from a set of 2 dimensional slice digital images wherein each slice digital image is encoded as an individual dicom file often an individual digital image data element i e single value representing measured image signal intensity is referred to as a u201c voxel u201d for 3 dimensional images and a u201c pixel u201d for 2 dimensional images the term voxel is commonly used to characterize a volume element whereas the term pixel is commonly used to characterize a picture element exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure can be applied to 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional images as such for the purposes of the description herein the terms voxel and pixel should be considered interchangeable i e describing an image elemental datum capable of having a range of numerical values voxel and pixels can be said to have the attributes both of location and value with the medical imaging system setup as described above and shown in fig1 a medical professional such as a radiologist uses the keyboard 44 a or mouse 44 b to indicate to a software application program 150 running on the diagnostic workstation computer 120 the desired patient record to be loaded into memory the ct digital image exam i e the set of ct slice digital images is then retrieved from the image archive computer.