After setting up the dcm4chee PACS server from previous tutorials, you will learn how to access it from a different workstation on the network.

First you need to make sure that Windows firewall or any other firewall software installed on the PACS server is not blocking the server IP address and PACS server port to the outside world. For testing purposes and to make things easier you can disable the firewall.

Since the server will always be online you need to use a fixed IP address for the server as you don’t want to have the IP address changing every now and then or you will be unable to access the server anymore. There are several tutorials on the internet to teach you how to fix an IP address; just search in Google.

The IP address of our server is 192.168.1.106 to find the IP address for your server you can go to command prompt and type:

ipconfig /all

Scroll all the way up and under IPv4 Address is your IP address. dcm4chee default port is 11112. Now we got all what we need to establish a connection. Open OsiriX on your Mac and go to Preferences and select Locations. Click on Add new node. Put the IP address, port, AETitle, and description. It should like this:

Make sure you check the boxes next to Q& R (Query and Retrieve) and Send. Q& R allows Osirix to query the PACS server for patients and retrieve the data set the user asks for. Send allows OsiriX to send data sets stored locally on the machine running OsiriX to be stored in the PACS server. Close the preferences window.

Now we need to store some patient data on the server. We do that by loading a data set in OsiriX then send it to be stored on the server. Open a DICOM data set in Osirix. In this example, we will be using a CBCT DICOM data set from the Hitachi MercuRay CBCT scanner. You can load a DICOM set under File menu. After the data set loading is completed, select it and click the Send button from the toolbar on top.

You can follow the status in Osirix by installing Growl app.

Now it’s time to test Q & R function. Click on Query button from the OsiriX top bar. You should be able to search for the data set you just uploaded using different search criteria. OsiriX comes loaded with many powerful tools that let you query the server for data either by patient name, date, modality…etc. It also allows you to specify to which workstation you want to retrieve your data to.

Set Retrieve to your Mac OsiriX workstation if it not set already from the drop down menu. Click Retrieve.

Depending on your server/workstation hard drive speed, network speed, and data set size; it can take from less than a minute to several minutes to download the data set to your local machine.

Double click on the data set to open it.

Congratulations!! You’ve just managed to link an Open Source PACS server (dcm4chee) to an Open Source PACS workstation OsiriX!

It is possible to send different types of data sets to the PACS server and not only CT data sets but since many oral and maxillofacial radiologists as well as dental schools use Cone Beam CT (CBCT) in their practice we decided to use a CBCT data set as an example.

As you can see, we setup the dcm4chee PACS server under Windows 7 Pro running  Parallels Dekstop 5. While this is not the best setup and you’ll need a dedicated PACS server for your work; it helps to show how powerful a Mac computer can be and  it make things easier for us for writing this tutorial!