Contributing to Orthanc¶

If you find Orthanc useful and wish to contribute to its development, here are some tasks you can take in charge that would greatly help us:

• Non-coding tasks:
  • Use Orthanc in the real life. ;)
  • Advertise about Orthanc, notably on social networks (we are active on Facebook and Twitter).
  • Answer our survey.
  • Improve and translate the Wikipedia pages about Orthanc.
  • Cite the reference paper about Orthanc in your research work.
  • Answer questions posted to the mailing list.
  • Improve the text of the Orthanc Book and REST API documentation (check out the instructions provided in the README).
  • Provide documentation and use cases (inside the dedicated GitHub repository, via pull requests).
  • Index external contributions inside the Links.md file.
• Maintenance tasks:
  • Report problems together with sample DICOM images and possible workarounds on the issue tracker.
  • Package Orthanc and its associated plugins for more UNIX or GNU/Linux distributions (e.g. Ubuntu PPA, RHEL, CentOS, openSUSE...).
  • Share your maintenance scripts or sample code inside the “Orthanc Contributed” public GitHub repository, via pull requests.
• Coding tasks:
  • The Orthanc project will happily accept patches in the core of Orthanc and in its associated official plugins. Please read the dedicated FAQ entry.
  • Interface Orthanc with other software (e.g. 3D Slicer, Matlab/Octave, Python, Horos, dicompyler...). Check the already supported frameworks.
  • Develop C/C++ plugins extending the Orthanc core. Here are some ideas of possible plugins:
    • Create a more advanced Web interface than the built-in Orthanc Explorer.
    • Extend the sample modality worklist plugin so that it manages the worklists (i.e. add/remove items) with a REST API or HL7 messages, instead of reading them from some folder on the filesystem.
    • Have a look at the TODO file containing our official roadmap.
  • Always remember that he recommended way of contributing to the source code of Orthanc is by creating C/C++ plugins. If the current plugin SDK is insufficient for you to develop some feature as a plugin, do not hesitate to request an extension to the Orthanc SDK on the mailing list.
• Financial support:
  • Participate in our crowdfunding campaigns.
  • Buy commercial services:
    • Osimis provides support packages dedicated to Orthanc.
    • Currently, Osimis is the only company ensuring such corporate services according to an open-source business model, but others might show up in the future. Please warn us if your know about another such company!