There are multiple ways of specifying Cine Rate (Multi-Frame Display Speed) in DICOM, in two categories:

The actual acquisition times of the frames

There are two ways of specifying this, equally spaced or arbitrary, and the choice is defined by attribute Frame Increment Pointer (0028,0009), which will point at one or other of the following attributes:

  • Frame Time (0018,1063) –> this will give the time in ms for every frame (so Rate = 1000/Frame Time)
  • Frame Time Vector (0018,1065) –> this is the frame time for each frame individually (so frame times do NOT need to be the same)

Recommended Display Frame Rate (0008, 2144)

This is specified in frames per second (unlike the acquisition times) and does NOT necessarily have to be the same as that calculated from the above, though there is no reason why it should be different. One thing to note, this rate is of type Integer, so if frame times were say 150ms, then this would need to be 6 or 7, not the calculated value of 6.67.