Orthanc: Setup Your PACS Server in No Time

Feb 25, 2020

2 mins read

This article demonstrate how you can setup a PACS server using docker.

Using Docker

docker run \
    --rm \
    -p 4242:4242 \
    -p 8042:8042 \
    -v {PATH_IN_YOUR_DISK}:/var/lib/orthanc/db/ \
    osimis/orthanc:20.2.0

8042 is the default port that orthanc serve. Use -p to export it.
{PATH_IN_YOUR_DISK} is an arbitrary path that in host disk, which Orthanc will save the dicom information inside it, make sure you create it before you run. /var/lib/orthanc/db/ is the default path live inside orthanc image.

Using Docker Compose

It is pretty similar to the docker run command.

version: "3.7"
services:
  orthanc:
    image: osimis/orthanc:20.2.0
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 4242:4242
      - 8042:8042
    volumes:
      - {PATH_IN_YOUR_DISK}:/var/lib/orthanc/db/

Once you can successfully run the Orthanc docker image, you might wonder how to configurate it.

Configuration

Method 1 – via ENV

You can configure Orthanc for docker by setting the environment variable just like other docker image such as mysql, it’s a normal way to setup your docker image.

Below are the frequently used variable name:

AC_AUTHENTICATION_ENABLED
AC_REGISTERED_USERS

Method 2 – via hardcode

Though setting ENV is pretty straight forward, but sometimes:

You have a lot to configure.
You just cannot find the correct environment variable you want to set.
The variables are multiline, like AC_REGISTERED_USERS, which is hard to set:

  AC_REGISTERED_USERS=
  {
  "foo": "baz"
  }

For these scenario, customize the configuration file is another option. It is the old way to setup hence it’s well documented, see here for documentations and here for an example.

There are four existed configure files:

/etc/orthanc/http.json

{
    "HttpTimeout": 0,
    "HttpsVerifyPeers": true,
    "HttpsCACertificates" : "/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt",
    "HttpProxy": "",
    "HttpPort": 8042,
    "HttpVerbose": false,
    "KeepAlive": true,
    "TcpNoDelay": true,
    "HttpRequestTimeout": 30
}

/etc/orthanc/remote-access.json

{
    "RemoteAccessAllowed": true,
    "AuthenticationEnabled": true,
    "RegisteredUsers": {}
}

/etc/orthanc/storage.json

{
    "StorageDirectory": "/var/lib/orthanc/db",
    "MaximumStorageSize": 0,
    "MaximumPatientCount": 0,
    "StoreDicom": true
}

/etc/orthanc/plugins.json

{
    "Plugins": ["/usr/share/orthanc/plugins"]
}

Note that you cannot set the same key in two (or more) different config files. So if you add RegisteredUsers in your customized config orthanc.json, it will conflict with one in remote-access.json. Set it in remote-access.json instead.

You can edit those files or create new one inside /etc/orthanc. There are some ways to do that:

Add in Dockerfile

FROM osimis/orthanc:20.2.0
COPY {YOUR_CONFIG_FILE_NAME}.json /etc/orthanc/

and

docker build -f {DOCKERFILE} -t local/orthanc
docker run \
    --rm \
    -p 4242:4242 \
    -p 8042:8042 \
    -v {PATH_IN_YOUR_DISK}:/var/lib/orthanc/db/ \
    local/orthanc

But it might be tedious to build it, so you can consider mounting the complete configuration:

Mount when `docker run`

Make sure you have all the necessary settings in {CUSTOMIZE_CONFIG}/, which includes:

/etc/orthanc/http.json
/etc/orthanc/remote-access.json
/etc/orthanc/storage.json
/etc/orthanc/plugins.json

and

docker run \
    --rm \
    -p 4242:4242 \
    -p 8042:8042 \
    -v {PATH_IN_YOUR_DISK}:/var/lib/orthanc/db/ \
    -v {CUSTOMIZE_CONFIG}:/etc/orthanc \
    osimis/orthanc:20.2.0