The matrix R coming from dicomread is the rawdata and you are not advised to change it.
Most probably you are only able to change the Default Window Level and Window Width in the DICOM headers. This default Window Level and Window Width are only used in application software which is able to retrieve this DICOM header information and hence display the image in an expected contrast level.
Hence, the displayed image will always be compelely black if you use image(R) instead of image(R,[]).
Following code provides a reference for you and you can observe the difference by usng imtool
X = dicomread('old.dcm');
metadata = dicominfo('old.dcm');
WC = metadata.WindowCenter;
WW = metadata.WindowWidth;
imtool(X,'DisplayRange',[WC(1)-WW(1), WC(1)+WW(1)]);
metadata.WindowCenter = [1050; 1050];
metadata.WindowWidth = [400; 400];
dicomwrite(X, 'New.dcm', metadata, 'CreateMode', 'copy');
Y = dicomread('New.dcm');
newmetadata = dicominfo('New.dcm');
newWC = newmetadata.WindowCenter;
newWW = newmetadata.WindowWidth;
imtool(Y,'DisplayRange',[newWC(1)-newWW(1), newWC(1)+newWW(1)]);
Use the original Window Level and Window Width (Left), and revised WL & WW (right):