About

DCMTK is a collection of libraries and applications implementing large parts the DICOM standard. It includes software for examining, constructing and converting DICOM image files, handling offline media, sending and receiving images over a network connection, as well as demonstrative image storage and worklist servers. DCMTK is is written in a mixture of ANSI C and C++. It comes in complete source code and is made available as “open source” software.

DCMTK is developed and maintained by a team located in Oldenburg, Germany, consisting of OFFIS e.V., Open Connections GmbH and J. Riesmeier.

QIICR supported implementation of the new functionality into DCMTK, specifically, development of the following components:

• dcmiod: a library for working with information objects and modules
• dcmseg: a library for working with segmentation objects
• dcmpmap: a library for working with parametric map objects
• support of the DICOM TID 1500 family of templates to support structured reporting of image measurements within dcmsr: a structured reporting library and utility apps

Availability

Installation: DCMTK is can be compiled from source. Binary packages for Windows and Linux platforms are available from the official web site. We also prepared unofficial binaries for Windows, Linux and macOS platforms that can be downloaded here (see the “Install DCMTK” section).

Documentation: link

Source code: link

Publications

Some of the improvements that we contributed to DCMTK are discussed in the publications below:

• Herz C, Fillion-Robin J-C, Onken M, et al. dcmqi: An Open Source Library for Standardized Communication of Quantitative Image Analysis Results Using DICOM. Cancer Res. American Association for Cancer Research; 2017;77(21):e87–e90 link.
• Fedorov A, Clunie D, Ulrich E, et al. DICOM for quantitative imaging biomarker development: a standards based approach to sharing clinical data and structured PET/CT analysis results in head and neck cancer research. PeerJ. 2016;4:e2057 link.

Grants support

• U24 CA180918 (development of the functionality described above)