Open Source Clinical Image and Object Management

dcm4che is a collection of open source applications and utilities for the healthcare enterprise. These applications have been developed in the Java programming language for performance and portability, supporting deployment on JDK 1.6 and up.

At the core of the dcm4che project is a robust implementation of the DICOM standard. The dcm4che DICOM toolkit & library is used in many production applications across the world and the current (5.x) version has been re-architected for high performance and flexibility.

Also contained within the dcm4che project is dcm4chee (the extra 'e' stands for 'enterprise'). dcm4chee is an Image Manager/Image Archive (according to IHE). The application contains the DICOM, HL7 services and interfaces that are required to provide storage, retrieval, and workflow to a healthcare environment. dcm4chee is pre-packaged and deployed within the JBoss application server. By taking advantage of many JBoss features (JMS, EJB, Servlet Engine, etc.), and assuming the role of several IHE actors for the sake of interoperability, the application provides many robust and scalable services:

Services

Service	Description
Web-based UI	dcm4chee contains a robust user interface for administrators which runs entirely in a Web browser.
DICOM Storage	Acting as an archive, dcm4chee is able to store any type of DICOM object to standard file systems, with compression if necessary.
DICOM Query/Retrieve	Query the archive for DICOM objects, and retrieve them.
WADO and RID	Web access to the archived content.
Other DICOM Services	MPPS, GPWL, MWL, Storage Committment, Instance Availability Notification, Study Content Notification, Output Content to CD Media, Hanging Protocols, and more.
HL7 Server	An integrated HL7 server which can act on ADT, ORM, and ORU message types.
IHE Services	dcm4chee can happily exist in an IHE-capable environment by integrating with an XDS/ XDSI registry and repository, acting as a secure node, and providing compliant auditing.