Why "Orthanc"?
==============

The spelling "`Orthanc
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthanc#Orthanc>`__" originates from
`J.R.R. Tolkien <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien>`__'s
work.

Orthanc is the black tower of Isengard that houses one of the
**palantíri**. A `palantír
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palant%C3%ADr>`__ is a spherical stone
whose name literally means "One that Sees from Afar". When one looks
into a palantír, one can communicate with other such stones and anyone
who might be looking into them. This is quite similar to the Orthanc
server, which is designed for a simple, transparent, programmatic
access to medical images in the entire hospital DICOM topology.

"Orthanc" also contains the trigram "RTH", standing for
**Radiotherapy**. This is a reference to the fact that Orthanc
originates from research on cancer that is carried on at the
`University Hospital of Liège <http://www.chu.ulg.ac.be/>`__, in the
Department of medical physics.