Basic Help and Understanding

[dave]

I work in a hospital environment in the IS department. I have been asked if it is possible to have a Dicom ping utility, by which I guess I am being asked if the Dicom server software is running under expectable parameters.

1. Is this what the echoscu.exe tool is for (C:\DCMTK\bin>echoscu -d <application_entity> --call <ip> <port> ... or simply C:\DCMTK\bin>echoscu <ip> <port>)?
2. Is the application entity name something I can discover on my own or do I need to contact the software vendor for this information?
3. If I get an "I'm alive" response from echoscu, what assumptions, if any, can I make about the dicom software on the server?

--------------
Of note:
I have the server hostname and IP, but not the port at this point, so when I try to put in random port numbers for testing, I get error messages like this:
F: 0006:0317 Peer aborted Association (or never connected)
F: 0006:031c TCP Initialization Error: No error
--------------

I realize I am asking very basic questions, but It's been many years since I've worked with the DCMTK or Dicom in general.

Thanks in advance.

Dave

[J. Riesmeier]

Re. 1: Yes.
Re. 2: You should contact the responsible IT administrator in the hospital (because the AE title is a configurable parameter).
Re. 3: The assumption is that there is an SCP listening on the specified port, reacting on the called AE title, accepting requests from your system (IP address / hostname, calling AE title) and speaking DICOM, of course

Regarding your note: You definitely need the port number. Well-known standard ports for DICOM are 104 and 11112. In principle, you could also perform a port scan but I would not recommend that in a real network environment ...

[dave]

Thank you, J. Riesmeier, for your kind response.

After 4 phone calls, I found the RIGHT person who had the AE name and port number, and I received "I: Received Echo Response (Status: Success)".
And, yes, it was port 104!

Thanks, again.

Dave