In order to save CT data I would like to create a DicomImage from scratch, similar like this can be done using DRTImageIOD. However, DicomImage does not have a default constructor. From the documentation it looks like the constructor can only load existing data. Is it possible to use DicomImage directly, or is going low-level through DcmFileFormat the only viable approach? (I am using Dcmtk 3.6.1)
As you can read in the documentation, the purpose of the DicomImage class is visualization (i.e. rendering) of DICOM images, not creating CT image objects (or instances of any other DICOM image IOD).
Since you are using the latest (?) DCMTK snapshot, you might want to have a look at the dcmiod module, which provides a higher-level API than dcmdata.