Mastering DICOM - #3 Setup Modality Worklist SCP

Introduction

In the earlier article, we have learnt how to setup DICOM for digging deeper into DICOM protocol. In this article, let us learn how to setup a modality worklist(WML) SCP. Modalities can send C-FIND queries to this SCP and retrieve worklist information

Using Orthanc Worklist Plugin

Orthanc server has worklist plugin¹ which will serve worklist files that are stored in a particular directory. Let us download sample worklist files from Orthanc repository and keep in "WorklistDatabase" directory.

Generate default configuration by running the following command.

$ ./Orthanc --config=config.json

In the orthanc configuration file, enable worklist plugin, specify the worklist database directory so that Orthanc can locate relevant worklist files, add required modalities and restart the server.

  "Plugins" : [
    "libModalityWorklists.dylib"
  ],

  "Worklists" : {
    "Enable": true,
    "Database": "./WorklistsDatabase",
    "FilterIssuerAet": false,
    "LimitAnswers": 0
  },

  "DicomModalities" : {
      "PYNETDICOM" : ["PYNETDICOM", "127.0.0.1", 4243],
      "FINDSCU" : ["FINDSCU", "127.0.0.1", 4244]
  }

Once the plugin is enabled, we can use findscu to send C-FIND query.

$ findscu -W -k "ScheduledProcedureStepSequence" 127.0.0.1 4242

This will retrieve all worklist files from the server.

Using wlmscpfs

dcmtk ² is a collection of utilities for DICOM standard. It has wlmscpfs application which implements basic Service Class Provider(SCP). We can start the service by running the following command.

wlmscpfs --debug --data-files-path WorklistsDatabase 4242

Once the service is started modalities can send C-FIND query to this service.

Conclusion

We have seen how to setup MWL SCP using Orthanc & wmlscpfs. Now that we have PACS & WML SCP up and running, in the next article lets see how to dig deeper in to the dicom standard.