Free and open source

Orthanc aims at providing a simple, yet powerful standalone DICOM server. It is designed to improve the DICOM flows in hospitals and to support research about the automated analysis of medical images. Orthanc lets its users focus on the content of the DICOM files, hiding the complexity of the DICOM format and of the DICOM protocol.

Orthanc can turn any computer running Windows, Linux or OS X into a DICOM store (in other words, a mini-PACS system). Its architecture is lightweight and standalone, meaning that no complex database administration is required, nor the installation of third-party dependencies.

What makes Orthanc unique is the fact that it provides a RESTful API. Thanks to this major feature, it is possible to drive Orthanc from any computer language. The DICOM tags of the stored medical images can be downloaded in the JSON file format. Furthermore, standard PNG images can be generated on-the-fly from the DICOM instances by Orthanc.

Orthanc also features a plugin mechanism to add new modules that extends the core capabilities of its REST API. A Web viewer, a PostgreSQL database back-end, a MySQL database back-end, and a reference implementation of DICOMweb are currently freely available as plugins.

Correlia is an open-source ImageJ/FIJI plug-in for the registration of 2D multi-modal microscopy data-sets. The software is developed at ProVIS - Centre for Correlative Microscopy and is specifically designed for the needs of chemical microscopy involving various micrographs as well as chemical maps at different resolutions and field-of-views.

The empanada-napari plugin is built to democratize deep learning image segmentation for researchers in electron microscopy (EM). It ships with MitoNet, a generalist model for the instance segmentation of mitochondria. There are also tools to quickly build and annotate training datasets, train generic panoptic segmentation models, finetune existing models, and scalably run inference on 2D or 3D data. To make segmentation model training faster and more robust, CEM pre-trained weights are used by default. These weights were trained using an unsupervised learning algorithm on over 1.5 million EM images from hundreds of unique EM datasets making them remarkably general.

ModularImageAnalysis (MIA) is an ImageJ plugin which provides a modular framework for assembling image and object analysis workflows. Detected objects can be transformed, filtered, measured and related. Analysis workflows are batch-enabled by default, allowing easy processing of high-content datasets.

MIA is designed for “out-of-the-box” compatibility with spatially-calibrated 5D images, yielding measurements in both pixel and physical units.  Functionality can be extended both internally, via integration with SciJava’s scripting interface, and externally, with Java modules that extend the MIA framework. Both have full access to all objects and images in the analysis workspace.

Workflows are, by default, compatible with batch processing multiple files within a single folder. Thanks to Bio-Formats, MIA has native support for multi-series image formats such as Leica .lif and Nikon .nd2.

Workflows can be automated from initial image loading through processing, object detection, measurement extraction, visualisation, and data exporting. MIA includes near 200 modules integrated with key ImageJ plugins such as Bio-Formats, TrackMate and Weka Trainable Segmentation.

Module(s) can be turned on/off dynamically in response to factors such as availability of images and objects, user inputs and measurement-based filters. Switches can also be added to “processing view” for easy workflow control.

MIA is developed in the Wolfson Bioimaging Facility at the University of Bristol.

ASTEC stands for Adaptive Segmentation and Tracking of Embryonic Cells. It proposes a full workflow for time lapse light sheet imaging analysis, including drift/motion compensation before the segmentation itself, and the capacity to correct for it.  It was used to process 3D+t movies acquired by the MuViSPIM light-sheet microscope in particular.