Orthanc is a standalone

DICOM Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) is a technical standard for the digital storage and Medical image sharing, transmission of medical images and related information. It includes a file format definition, which specifies the str ...

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 Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

. 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 REST (Representational State Transfer) is a software architectural style that was created to describe the design and guide the development of the architecture for the World Wide Web. REST defines a set of constraints for how the architecture of ...

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 or ) is an open standard file format and electronic data interchange, data interchange format that uses Human-readable medium and data, human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consi ...

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 software, free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. PostgreSQL features transaction processing, transactions ...

database back-end, * a

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, 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 rel ...

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 fo ...

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

Object storage Object storage (also known as object-based storage or blob storage) is a computer data storage approach that manages data as "blobs" or "objects", as opposed to other storage architectures like file systems, which manage data as a file hierarchy, ...

storage back-end, * a

Python (programming language) Python is a high-level programming language, high-level, general-purpose programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes code readability with the use of significant indentation. Python is type system#DYNAMIC, dynamically type-checked a ...

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 neuroanatomy, structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive ...

file formats

History and awards

Orthanc was initiated by

Sébastien Jodogne Sébastien is a common French given name. It is a French form of the Latin name ''Sebastianus'' meaning "from Sebaste". Sebaste was a common placename in classical Antiquity, derived from the Greek word ''σεβαστος'', or ''sebastos'', mea ...

in 2011 as a

postdoctoral researcher A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary acade ...

a
CHU de Liège
The initial public release happened on . For his work on Orthanc,

received the 2014 Advancement of Free Software award. Orthanc also received the

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 striv ...

award for the best 2015 e-health project in Belgium. Between 2017 and 2021, the development has been supported by the Osimis company, still with

as the lead developer. Since 2021, the development has been handled both by Alain Mazy with financial support fro
Open Collective
and by the health informatics research team led by

Université Catholique de Louvain UCLouvain (or Université catholique de Louvain , French for Catholic University of Louvain, officially in English the University of Louvain) is Belgium's largest French-speaking university and one of the oldest in Europe (originally establishe ...

. Orthanc was recognized as a digital public good by the Digital Public Goods Alliance in August 2023.

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 that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel (operating system), kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply distribution (marketing), product distribution pe ...

including

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

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-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

and

OpenBSD OpenBSD is a security-focused operating system, security-focused, free software, Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). Theo de Raadt created OpenBSD in 1995 by fork (software development), forking NetBSD ...

. 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) Computer appliance, appliances. Synology's line of NAS is known as the DiskStation for desktop models, FlashStation for Flash memory, all-flash model ...

NAS users.

References

External links

* {{Free healthcare software, state=expanded Medical imaging Medical software Free software programmed in C++ Free server software Free health care software Free DICOM software

Plugins

History and awards

Distribution

See also

References

External links