Monday October 17 : 8:30 - 5:30 Set up and coordination day.
Tuesday October 18 - Friday October 21 8:30 - 5:30 : Judged testing
Saturday October 22 8:30 - 12:00 : Technical Committee meeting for testing discussion only.

Schedule indicates times that participants are expected to be available. You are on your own schedule however, and there will often be times you are needed to communicate or meet with your company. If you have testing pending and need to be gone for an extended period, please coordinate with the judges.

Link to IHE-RO / Connectathon poll on actors, participation agreement: Connectathon Poll / Agreement

* More information, shipping and other information for this year's Fall Connectathon are pending.

5520 Nobel Dr.
Fitchburg, WI 53711

Map of Airport and Philips

The closest RECOMMENDED hotel is Candlewood Suites
5421 Caddis Bend, Madison, WI 53711
Phone:+1 (608) 271-3400

There are many other good hotels closer to downtown. Also, staying on the Beltline highway (Hwy 12 & 18, which loops along the south and west of Madison) will be convenient if you have a rental car. Stay with reputable hotel vendors.

4 miles from the office is Country Inn and Suites.
6275 Nesbitt Rd, Madison, WI 53719
Phone:(608) 270-1900

The Madison Bus Line (Madison Metro) does not reach Nobel Dr. Candlewood Suites said they would run a shuttle to Philips, but it is recommended that you consider renting a car in Madison.

The Dane County Airport (MSN) has the following car rental companies near the baggage claim:
* Alamo
* AVIS
* Budget
* Enterprise
* Hertz
* National

There are usually cabs available at the far left exit (as you face the baggage claim). If your plane is coming in very early or very late, they might be sparse. Madison cab companies usually do not look for riders on the street, other than pickups like the airport, they take call reservations. Cab companies in Madison: Dane County Airport Ground Transportation

Uber and Lyft do operate legally in Madison as of May 2015, but the author has not used them in Madison.

• Get trained by your application trainers on the specific profiles when it comes to using your software, e.g.
  • Be prepared to contour image data
  • Perform treatment planning
  • Show plan details for judging

• For actor specific instructions, see respective profile page, and information in the profile.
• In general it's best if you can only test against a vendor who has previously passed, but that may not be possible at all Connectathons
• In order to pass a specific profile, test instructions will be provided in order to prepare data for the judging. The general rule is that an application implementing a consumer actor has to consume data from at least three different vendors. An application implementing a producer actor has to provide data that will be tested on at least three other systems. Only then, not only interconnectivity, but interoperability can be testified.
• As of Aug 2015, test tools are available for ARTI, BRTO, DCOM, and MMRO-II profiles. Test tool installers can be downloaded from the Test Tools page. (Only available to Connectathon participants)
• Previous years test tools can be found at http://www.dvtk.org/downloads/

• Plan to be in attendance for the entire week, Monday through Friday. Judges cannot predict when they will be able to test your adherence, and other vendors may need to run networking tests against your data before judges are available. Judging time depends on many things:
  • Room setup, network setup
  • Dependency on test data, often with a requirement to be generated during testing by the judges
  • Lack of preparedness of you or your testing partners may negatively affect all schedules.
• Communicate with your vendor peers. See who is testing what, learn where materials are posted, and what are the next steps.
• If you find some information is not easily accessible, volunteer to post it in a visible place or put it on the wiki.
• The role of judges is to judge, they will not help with software issues, networking issues or other technical concerns. Everyone else in the room is a vendor attendee, other than ASTRO support personnel.
• If you need to leave for an extended time, please inform the judges who can adjust test times if needed.
• Carefully read your registration materials and contract from ASTRO. There are further binding agreements detailed there.

See the main IHE-RO page at IHE-RO Main Page

Once you have shown adherence to a profile, please plan to attend as a test supporter in following years. Because of the small (and shrinking!) number of vendors in the RO arena, truly testing interoperability is only possible if every implementer of a given profile is in attendance, whether they are actively testing for adherence or not.

Please see the following information → TBD

Contact ASTRO with any questions.

• The PACS will likely be used for dataset storage and retrieval.
• This is a common place where judges can place test data, and where vendors can store output of their tests for evaluation and use by other vendors
• The PACS is supplied and run by a vendor volunteer. Please be respectful of their time and work, since they are likely trying to get through testing, as well as supporting the persistence function of the Connectathon.

<Profile><year><Case><SetNumber><Vendor><Product>

• <Profile>: BRTO, MMRO, ARTI, DCOM, TDW (Profile Codes)
  • BRTO: Basic RT Objects
  • MMRO: Multi-Modality image registration in Radiation Oncology
  • ARTI: Advanced RT Objects Interoperability
  • DCOM: Dose Compositing
  • TDW: Treatment Delivery Workflow
• <year>: 14, 15, 16, …
• <Case>: A, B
  • A: Spring Connectathon
  • B: Fall Connectathon
  • R: Re-testing
• <SetNumber>: 01, 02, 03, …
• <Vendor>: AC, BR, EL, MI, RA, VA, …
  • AC: Accuray
  • BR: Brainlab
  • EL: Elekta
  • MI: MIM software
  • RA: RaySearch
  • VA: Varian
  • If you are a new vendor, please contact the judges for an appropriate vendor code

Connectathons are opportunities for informal testing of new profiles. It is a good opportunity to stress an implementation and even perform some vendor-specific peer-to-peer tests. This is not only possible, but also encouraged. Participating vendors are advised to prepare their own test schedule and discuss with others how their goals can be met. As judges are available, too, feel free to address them with any questions regarding testing during the official Connectathon.