Status of dicom-rt Development Branch

[max.t...@gmail.com]

Hi,

I am looking into the DICOM-RT capabilities of Orthanc. I inspected the dicom-rt mercurial branch and it looks like there was a significant amount of progress made but that there were never any RT-related additions merged to the main branch. Does anyone know if development on that branch will resume? Or even what the development goals are for that branch?
Maybe this isn't the right place for this sort of question since it is a users' group, but I am currently involved in planning a development project at a medical company and we are interested in using Orthanc. We would consider contributing to the current dicom-rt branch but it would be nice to have more information about where it left off and where it was headed.

[Sébastien Jodogne]

Hello,

I thank you for your message, and I apologize for the long delay.

The functionalities implemented in the "dicom-rt" branch consisted in the parsing of DICOM RT-STRUCT files. This feature is now maintained as part of the Stone of Orthanc project, that notably implements the rendering of structures (contours) for radiotherapy and nuclear medicine:

http://www.orthanc-server.com/static.php?page=stone

The "OrthancStone::DicomStructureSet" is the class of interest in that respect:

https://bitbucket.org/sjodogne/orthanc-stone/src/ed07f4bbf1a8f276d6a8bc5a85e145de1e6d44df/Framework/Toolbox/DicomStructureSet.h

We certainly want to pursue this development. Given the fact that the Stone of Orthanc enables the rendering of 3D volumes with accurate physical coordinates, it should be able to render RT-DOSE files as well (those are "just" a 3D array of floating-point values, pretty much like CT or MRI). However, we don't have the plan of working on RT-PLAN, as such files are extremely bound to the manufacturers of radiotherapy/protontherapy equipments. Maybe initiatives such as "openPATH" could contribute to the development of RT-PLAN:

http://leadingthepath.org/openpath.php

If your company has interest in Orthanc (which is very exciting news!), it would be very useful to get in touch with Osimis, the commercial partner of the Orthanc project, as this could lead to a boost in the open-source development of the Stone of Orthanc to the benefit of the worldwide imaging community :

http://www.osimis.io/en/

Once again, sorry for the delay... be sure that we're clearly looking forward for potential partnerships. ;)

Regards,

Sébastien-