[Freesurfer] faster mri_parse_sdcmdir?

I've been using mri_parse_sdcmdir for a long time to convert my dicom files to nifti or analyze. It takes 10 minutes or more on my G5 Mac for an entire data session. Some other Mac tools like Osirix and Neurolens can read in all of the dicom files and parse them in a few seconds. It seems like mri_parse_sdcmdir spends most of its time parsing the dicom files and reading the headers. Is there some way to speed this up? I'm not complaining, just inquiring. There are some programmers here that may be able to help. The source for Neurolens is available, for instance.

I found another program on the web, dinifti that seemed like it was going to be pretty fast, but then it died with a segmentation fault.

keith