Orthanc is a standalone

DICOM Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) is the standard for the communication and management of medical imaging information and related data. DICOM is most commonly used for storing and transmitting medical images enabling the integ ...

server. It is designed to improve the DICOM flows in hospitals and to support research about the automated analysis of medical images. Orthanc lets its users focus on the content of the DICOM files, hiding the complexity of the DICOM format and of the DICOM protocol. It is licensed under the

GPLv3 The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

. Orthanc can turn any computer running Windows, Linux or OS X into a DICOM store (in other words, a mini-PACS system). Its architecture is standalone, meaning that no complex database administration is required, nor the installation of third-party dependencies. Orthanc is also available as Docker images. Orthanc provides a RESTful API on top of a DICOM server. Therefore, it is possible to drive Orthanc from any computer language. The DICOM tags of the stored medical images can be downloaded in the

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ; also ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other ser ...

file format. Furthermore, standard PNG images can be generated on the fly from the DICOM instances by Orthanc.

Plugins

Orthanc also features a plugin mechanism to add new modules that extends the core capabilities of its REST API. As of May 2022, a dozen of plugins are available: * multiple DICOM Web viewers, * a

PostgreSQL PostgreSQL (, ), also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the In ...

database back-end, * a

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database o ...

database back-end, * an

ODBC In computing, Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) is a standard application programming interface (API) for accessing database management systems (DBMS). The designers of ODBC aimed to make it independent of database systems and operating systems. An ...

database back-end, * a reference implementation of

DICOMweb DICOMweb is a term applied to the family of RESTful DICOM services defined for sending, retrieving and querying for medical images and related information. The intent is to provide a light-weight mobile device and web browser friendly mechanism for ...

, * a Whole Slide Imaging viewer and tools to convert to/from WSI formats. * 3

Object_storage Object storage (also known as object-based storage) is a computer data storage that manages data as objects, as opposed to other storage architectures like file systems which manages data as a file hierarchy, and block storage which manages data as ...

storage back-end, * a

Python_(programming_language) Python is a high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. Python is dynamically-typed and garbage-collected. It supports multiple programming para ...

plugin * a plugin to access data from The_Cancer_Imaging_Archive * a plugin to index a local storage * a plugin to handle

Neuroimaging Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive manner. Incre ...

file formats * an
more

History & awards

Orthanc was initiated by Sébastien Jodogne in 2011 while working a
CHU de Liège
The initial public release happened on . For his work on Orthanc, Sébastien Jodogne received the Free Software Award for 2014. Orthanc also received the eHealth

Agoria Agoria, previously known as Fabrimetal, is a Belgian employers' organization and member of the Federation of Belgian Enterprises. Description Agoria connects over 1900 technologically inspired companies active in Belgium (2019) that strive ...

award for 2015. From 2015, the development has also been supported by Osimis, still with Sébastien Jodogne as the main contributor. Since 2021, the development is provided by UCLouvain with Sébastien Jodogne and by Alain Mazy with financial support from Osimis and fro
Open Collective

Distribution

Orthanc is part of the Debian Med project. Official packages are available for numerous

Linux distributions A Linux distribution (often abbreviated as distro) is an operating system made from a software collection that includes the Linux kernel and, often, a package management system. Linux users usually obtain their operating system by downloading one ...

including

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of D ...

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: ''Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All the ...

and

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

. Ports are available for

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

and

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused, free and open-source, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by forking NetBSD 1.0. According to the website, the OpenBSD project em ...

. Windows/MacOS binary installer packages may be freely downloaded from the Orthanc website but are provided by a commercial partner. Orthanc is also available as a Beta-package through the package center for

Synology Synology Inc. () is a Taiwanese corporation that specializes in network-attached storage (NAS) appliances. Synology's line of NAS is known as the DiskStation for desktop models, FlashStation for all-flash models, and RackStation for rack-moun ...

NAS users.

References

External links

* * *
DCMTK
- The DICOM toolkit that is embedded in Orthanc Medical imaging Medical software Free software programmed in C++ Free server software Free health care software Free DICOM software {{Free-software-stub

Plugins

History & awards

Distribution

See also

References

External links