FAQ

Owned by DamienD
Last updated: Jun 15, 2007

Frequently Asked Questions about the dcm4che Project

Q: What's with all of these versions of dcm4che?

A: dcm4che 1.x is the DICOM toolkit that is currently used by the dcm4chee-2.x (formerly called dcm4jboss) archive system.  The dcm4che-2.x (also known as dcm4che2) toolkit is a re-write of the dcm4che-1.x DICOM toolkit.  It will be integrated into the dcm4chee archive at some point in the future.  The dcm4che-1.x DICOM toolkit  is currently in maintenance mode, so new DICOM toolkit users should concentrate on the 2.x version.  The dcm4chee-3.x archive will be the next generation of the archive system.  It is being developed in components (currently the Audit Record Repository - ARR is in progress) which will likely be merged piecemeal into the dcm4chee-2.x archive, eventually replacing the 2.x line.

Q: How do I pronounce dcm4che and dcm4chee?

A: dcm4che (D-C-M-for-CHAY), dcm4chee (D-C-M-for-CHEE). See the History page for the reasons behind the naming of dcm4che. dcm4chee is intended as a prefix for all of the Jave Enterprise Edition (JEE) related components. dcm4chee-arr, dcm4chee-web, dcm4chee-xds for example.

Q: What messages can the archive send when data are edited in the web interface?

A:

  Edit Patient -> HL7 ADT^A08
  Merge Patient -> HL7 ADT^A40
  Delete Patient -> HL7 ADT^A23
  
  New Study -> DICOM Private Study Mgt N-CREATE
  Edit Study -> DICOM Private Study Mgt N-SET
  Move Study -> DICOM Private Study Mgt N-SET
  Delete Study -> DICOM Private Study Mgt N-DELETE
  New Series -> DICOM Private Study Mgt N-SET
  Edit Series -> DICOM Private Study Mgt N-SET
  Move Series -> DICOM Private Study Mgt N-SET
  Delete Series -> DICOM Private Study Mgt N-ACTION
  Move Instance -> DICOM Private Study Mgt N-SET
  Delete Instance  -> DICOM Private Study Mgt N-ACTION

Q: How to attach a debugger to dcm4chee?

A:

  1. Run JVM with debugging enabled. Add the following to JAVA_OPTS in run.conf 
    -Xdebug \-Xrunjdwp:server=y,transport=dt_socket,address=4142,suspend=n
  2. When you need to attach debugger do 
    jdb \-attach 4142

Q: Can the dcm4chee archive manage the distribution of storage on different volumes? For example: when a volume is full, dcm4chee would automatically start storing to the next volume.

A: Yes, dcm4chee can manage the volumes in this fashion.

Take a look at the dcm4chee service (MBean) configuration. Go to your JBoss JMX console (http://host:port/jmx-console), and click on service=FileSystemMgmt. This service has many of the attributes and operations for manipulating storage in dcm4chee.

Find the operation entitled addOnlineFileSystem(). Put your directory path into the appropriate field and click on Invoke. Do this for your file systems, in the order that you wish them to be linked.