Starting in the early 1990ies, OFFIS has been engaged in the area of the DICOM standard (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) for more than 20 years. DICOM defines rules how medical images are to be structured and communicated via network or exchange media. Even before the first official version of the DICOM standard was published, OFFIS started with the implementation of the OFFIS DICOM Toolkit (DCMTK), initially known as the “European CTN” (Central Test Node). Since then, DCMTK has been very successful and can be seen as one of the biggest and most popular DICOM libraries in the world today.

DCMTK is not bound to a specific operating system but, besides Windows, runs well under different Linux or BSD systems, Mac OS X, Android and others. The toolkit is offered as Free Open Source Software (FOSS). Thus, it is also available for free to vendors who use DCMTK for testing or implementing commercial products like medical image archives or departmental information systems.

The toolkit is downloaded from the OFFIS servers about 100,000 times per year and is also supported by most Linux distribution as an official software package that can be downloaded and installed using the operating system’s package manager.

Through the work on DCMTK over the years an in-depth knowledge of the DICOM standard has been established at OFFIS, mirrored by many DICOM related scientific publications within the last two decades. Therefore, OFFIS today is internationally known for its ongoing work on DICOM and has conducted many research projects in this field. Furthermore, OFFIS offers commercial software development based on DCMTK internationally and performs many trainings courses and consulting sessions every year.