OrthancPi & OrthancMac - mbarnig/RadioLogic GitHub Wiki
OrthancPi
An initial requirement for RadioLogic was to use the tool in training rooms where Internet is not available. The idea was to develop a small portable headless DICOM device to store and serve the clinical cases. Early 2016, the Orthanc source code was ported to the Raspberry Pi, a credit-card–sized single-board computer. The software and the data were stored on an SD-card. OrthancPi was tested on the Raspberry models B Pi1, Pi2 and Pi3 with different WiFi adapters. The model Pi3 was finally selected for performance reasons (10 x the speed of model 1) and because a dual-band WiFi chip (Broadcom BCM43438) was integrated on the board. The same chip supports Bluetooth 4.0, which allowed the wireless connection of a keyboard and mouse during the development.
It appeared however that troubleshooting network problems with a headless (without display) device was not very convenient. OrthancPi was never used in practice and the project was considered as a proof of concept.
OrthancMac
In parallel to the development of OrthancPi, the usage of a MacBook as Orthanc server was considered. The source code was compiled with Xcode on a Mac running OS X El Capitan. The project was named OrthancMac.
Four operational modes were considered for the MacBook Orthanc server:
- The server is also used as standalone client, without Internet connection
- The server is also used as standalone client, with an Internet connection through a Wi-Fi router
- An iPad is used as client with an Internet connection through the same Wi-Fi router (same local network)
- An iPad is used as client with a local AdHoc Wi-Fi Connection (SSID = radiologic-open), established by the server
The temporary installation of a router was not feasible. To use the RadioLogic tool in training rooms without Internet, the only possible solution was therefore mode 4. In this case a local private DNS server was set up. A self-assigned static IP address of the AdHoc Wi-Fi interface in the range 169.254.0.0/16 was used. The DNS server was always running when the MacBook activated the AdHoc network. The DNS address was changed once in the configuration of the AdHoc Wi-Fi connection, which is different from the configuration of the other Wi-Fi infrastructure connections.
It appeared that this solution was not workable due to configuration problems of the reversed AdHoc WiFi network by non-technical people.
Conclusions
A dedicated, well configured hardware is required to act as Orthanc server. The idea of the RadioLogicArchive was born.