DICOM-RST

DICOMweb-compatible gateway server with DIMSE and S3 implementations.

Documentation | Changelog

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DICOM-RST is a robust DICOMweb-compatible gateway server that supports QIDO-RS, WADO-RS and STOW-RS independently of the PACS vendor, ensuring robust and performant transfers of large amounts of imaging data with high parallelism from multiple PACS to multiple clients.

This project is part of the Open Medical Inference (OMI) project and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with the funding code 01ZZ2315A-P.

Available Backends

DICOM-RST provides multiple backend implementations for the DICOMweb gateway server:

DIMSE: The DIMSE backend translates DICOMweb requests into DIMSE-C messages (e.g. WADO-RS to C-MOVE). This is the preferred backend for most users due to the broad availability and support of DIMSE services in picture archiving and communication systems.

S3: The experimental S3 backend downloads DICOM instances from S3-compatible storage. Currently, only WADO-RS instance retrieval is implemented (no metadata or rendered resources).

DICOMweb Features

Note

Actual support may vary depending on the features implemented by the origin server.

Retrieve DICOM objects (WADO-RS)

https://www.dicomstandard.org/using/dicomweb/retrieve-wado-rs-and-wado-uri

Instance Resources

Description	Path	Support Status
Study Instances	studies/{study}	✅
Series Instances	studies/{study}/series/{series}	✅
Instance	studies/{study}/series/{series}/instances/{instance}	✅

Metadata Resources

Description	Path	Support Status
Study Metadata	studies/{study}/metadata	✅
Series Metadata	studies/{study}/series/{series}/metadata	✅
Instance Metadata	studies/{study}/series/{series}/instances/{instance}/metadata	✅

Metadata is returned as DICOM JSON with bulkdata (e.g. pixel data) removed. Metadata resources are not supported by the S3 backend.

Rendered Resources

Description	Path	Support Status
Study Instances	studies/{study}/rendered	✅
Series Instances	studies/{study}/series/{series}/rendered	✅
Instance	studies/{study}/series/{series}/instances/{instance}/rendered	✅
Frames	studies/{study}/series/{series}/instances/{instance}/frames/{frames}/rendered	✅

For rendering, the first frame of the first instance with pixeldata is used.

The following query parameters are supported:

Key	Description	Support Status
quality	Compression quality for lossy formats like JPEG	✅
viewport	Cropping and scaling	✅
window	Windowing (VOI LUT)	✅

Media Type	Support Status
image/jpeg	✅
image/png	✅
image/jp2	❌
image/gif	❌ (single frame)
image/gif	❌ (multi frame)
video/mpeg	❌
video/mp4	❌
video/H265	❌
text/html	❌
text/plain	❌
text/xml	❌
text/rtf	❌
application/pdf	❌

Thumbnail Resources

Description	Path	Support Status
Study Instances	studies/{study}/thumbnail	✅
Series Instances	studies/{study}/series/{series}/thumbnail	✅
Instance	studies/{study}/series/{series}/instances/{instance}/thumbnail	✅
Frames	studies/{study}/series/{series}/instances/{instance}/frames/{frames}/thumbnail	❌

The thumbnail resources just perform a 303 redirect to their rendered counterparts

Bulkdata Resources

❌ Bulkdata Resources are not supported.

Pixel Data Resources

❌ Pixel Data Resources are not supported.

Search for DICOM objects (QIDO-RS)

https://www.dicomstandard.org/using/dicomweb/query-qido-rs

Resources

Resource	URI Template	Support Status
All Studies	/studies{?search*}	✅
Study's Series	/studies/{study}/series{?search*}	✅
Study's Series' Instances	/studies/{study}/series/{series}/instances{?search*}	✅
Study's Instances	/studies/{study}/instances{?search*}	✅
All Series	/series{?search*}	✅
All Instances	/instances{?search*}	✅

Query Parameters

Key	Description	Support Status
{attributeID}	Query matching on supplied value	✅
includefield	Include supplied tags in result	✅
fuzzymatching	Whether query should use fuzzy matching	❌
limit	Return only {n} results	✅
offset	Skip {n} results	✅

Store DICOM objects (STOW-RS)

https://www.dicomstandard.org/using/dicomweb/store-stow-rs

Resources

Resource	URI Template	Support Status
Studies	/studies	✅
Study	/studies/{study}	❌

Search for Modality Worklist (MWL-RS)

https://www.dicomstandard.org/news-dir/current/docs/sups/sup246.pdf

Resources

Resource	URI Template	Support Status
Worklist Items	/modality-scheduled-procedure-steps{?search*}	✅

Query Parameters

Key	Description	Support Status
{attributeID}	Query matching on supplied value	✅
includefield	Include supplied tags in result	✅
fuzzymatching	Whether query should use fuzzy matching	❌
limit	Return only {n} results	✅
offset	Skip {n} results	✅

Manage worklist items (UPS-RS)

https://www.dicomstandard.org/using/dicomweb/workflow-ups-rs

❌ UPS-RS is not supported.

DICOM-RST Features

DICOM-RST provides additional features that are not part of the DICOMweb specification.

AET list

Returns a list of configured AETs.

Resource	URI Template
AET List	/aets

Health Check

Returns a simple OK if the connection is still healthy.

Resource	URI Template
Health Check	/aets/{aet}

Footnotes

1. The DICOM-RST logo is adapted from the Rust logo owned by the Rust Foundation, used under CC-BY. ↩