How To Use a Project ID as a DICOM AE Title

Scalability Warning. There is a known issue in XNAT that affects how many unique ports can be used by active SCP Receivers at a time. Using this tutorial at production scale could cause your XNAT to stop receiving DICOM data.

See XNAT-7024 - Getting issue details... STATUS  

A useful configuration for routing DICOM data into XNAT is to configure a particular DICOM SCP Receiver to route all data to a specific project – one receiver, one project. This document focuses on how to configure a DICOM SCP Receiver for this use case.

XNAT uses DICOM Object Identifiers (DOIs) to implement rules that determine mappings from DICOM attributes to XNAT project, subject, and session to facilitate the routing of uploaded DICOM data into XNAT. XNAT's DICOM SCP Receivers are configured with specific DOIs to facilitate different routing from different sources.  See Connecting XNAT to DICOM Scanners and PACS and How XNAT Scans DICOM to Map to Project/Subject/Session for a general overview.  

An XNAT Project is uniquely identified by its ID which is a string of characters established at the project's creation. A project's ID can be found on the project's home page. We will use "MyProject" for this example.

DICOM SCP Receivers are uniquely determined by their AE Title and port. Open the dialog to create a new Receiver: Administer > Site Administration > DICOM SCP Receivers > New DICOM SCP Receiver.

  1. Set the AE Title to the project ID: MyProject.
  2. Set the port to a value of your choice. The default 8104 can be reused.
  3. Select dicomObjectIdentifier (Default) for the Identifier. Note: The Identifier selector may not be present if XNAT only has one DICOM Object Identifier installed. This should be the dicomObjectIdentifier by default.
  4. Enable Routing Expressions to Enabled.
  5. Set Project Routing Expression to "(0008,0018):(.*):1 t:.+ r:MyProject".
    The meaning of this expression is:
    1. Take the value in DICOM attribute (0008,0018). This value is 'SOP Instance UID' which should exist in every DICOM object.
    2. Match the entire value and replace it with the string "MyProject".
    3. Use the value "MyProject" as the ID of the destination Project.

All DICOM sent to AE Title "MyProject" on port 8104 will be routed to Project "MyProject". Note that Subject and Session Routing Expressions are left blank.  In this case the standard routing rules for Subject and Session will apply.  Adding expressions here can provide other behavior as desired.


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