Orthanc aims at providing a simple, yet powerful standalone DICOM server. It
is designed to improve the DICOM flows in hospitals and to support research
about the automated analysis of medical images. Orthanc lets its users focus
on the content of the DICOM files, hiding the complexity of the DICOM format
and of the DICOM protocol.

Orthanc can turn any computer running Windows, Linux, FreeBSD or OS X into a
DICOM store (in other words, a mini-PACS system). Its architecture is
lightweight and standalone, meaning that no complex database administration
is required, nor the installation of third-party dependencies.

What makes Orthanc unique is the fact that it provides a RESTful API. Thanks
to this major feature, it is possible to drive Orthanc from any computer
language. The DICOM tags of the stored medical images can be downloaded in
the JSON file format. Furthermore, standard PNG images can be generated
on-the-fly from the DICOM instances by Orthanc.

Orthanc also features a plugin mechanism to add new modules that extends the
core capabilities of its REST API. A Web viewer, a PostgreSQL database
back-end, a MySQL database back-end, and a reference implementation of
DICOMweb are currently freely available as plugins.