NCI Cancer Research Data Commons (CRDC) — datacommons.cancer.gov

The US National Cancer Institute's (NCI) cancer-research data cloud, which connects imaging, genomic, proteomic, and other data nodes under one roof and provides a cloud-based analysis environment. It includes the Imaging Data Commons (IDC), Genomic Data Commons (GDC), Proteomic Data Commons (PDC), and others.

Mostly open access; some controlled data requires dbGaP authorization.

Imaging Data Commons (IDC) — portal.imaging.datacommons.cancer.gov

The imaging node of CRDC, which integrates and cloud-hosts a large share of TCIA's imaging (including DICOM-RT) for direct browser- and cloud-based viewing, querying, and analysis.

Free and public, no application required; cloud compute supported.

SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results) — seer.cancer.gov

NCI's population-based cancer registry database covering incidence, mortality, and long-term survival/follow-up — a key source for radiotherapy outcomes and epidemiology research.

Clinical and survival data on millions of cases across multiple US registries. Summary statistics free and public; case-level research requires signed data-use agreement.

The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) — cancerimagingarchive.net

The central public oncology imaging archive, organized into 'collections.' Many collections include full DICOM-RT files — structure sets (RTSTRUCT), dose (RTDOSE), and plans (RTPLAN) — and are often paired with clinical outcomes, genomics, and expert annotations.

Hundreds of collections spanning many tumor types and modalities (CT/MRI/PET, etc.). Free public download, most under CC BY licensing.

Selected radiotherapy-relevant TCIA collections:

NSCLC-Radiomics — NSCLC CT with GTV and OAR contours; a classic radiomics dataset. Head-Neck / HNSCC series — head-and-neck cases with planning CT, structure sets, and dose. GLIS-RT — glioma segmentation for radiotherapy. Pancreatic-CT-CBCT-SEG — breath-hold CT and CBCT with expert OAR segmentations. Brain-TR-GammaKnife — Gamma Knife brain-metastasis MRI with paired DICOM-RT.

OpenKBP dataset — AAPM Grand Challenge

Public data from the AAPM 2020 knowledge-based planning challenge: ~340 head-and-neck IMRT plans (CT, structures, dose). One of the most widely used benchmarks in dose prediction.

Free via the challenge's GitHub repository.

GDP-HMM / HMM-RT dataset — AAPM 2025 Challenge

The AAPM 2025 'Generalizable Dose Prediction for Heterogeneous Multi-cohort and Multi-site Radiotherapy Planning' challenge dataset — over ten times larger than existing public plan datasets, with a DICOM version also provided.

Free via the challenge platform and GitHub (registration).

AAPM Grand Challenges hub — aapm.org/GrandChallenge

Entry point for AAPM's medical-physics challenges over the years, including RT-MAC (head-and-neck MR auto-segmentation), OpenKBP, lung target tracking (MATCH), and other radiotherapy tasks and datasets.

Most challenge data is free; some requires registration or accepting terms.

Grand Challenge — grand-challenge.org

A general platform for medical-imaging AI challenges and datasets, covering many segmentation, detection, and registration tasks, some radiotherapy-related.

Free registration; dataset access varies by challenge.

Project Data Sphere — projectdatasphere.org

A free oncology clinical-trial 'library-laboratory' that shares de-identified patient-level data from Phase II/III trials, with free analysis tools provided.

Hundreds of studies and over 100,000 patient lives. Free after registration; no research proposal required.

NCI NCTN/NCORP Data Archive — nctn-data-archive.nci.nih.gov

A controlled-access repository run by NCI in partnership with Project Data Sphere, centrally storing and sharing patient-level datasets generated by the US National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN).

Controlled access; requires a data request and approval.

ClinicalTrials.gov — clinicaltrials.gov

The largest clinical-trials registry, where you can search protocols, eligibility criteria, sample sizes, and some results. Many radiotherapy trial protocols and plan-QA details can be found here.

Free and public, no registration.

Vivli / CSDR and other industry data-sharing platforms — vivli.org

Cross-organization platforms for sharing clinical-trial data (including CSDR, YODA, etc.), covering controlled-access patient-level data from many industry-sponsored trials.

Controlled access; typically requires a research proposal and approval.

QUANTEC — Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. (2010 special issue)

'Quantitative Analyses of Normal Tissue Effects in the Clinic' — the foundational compilation of organ dose–volume limits for conventional fractionation, still a primary reference for clinical planning.

HyTEC — Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. (special issue)

'Hypofractionated Treatment Effects in the Clinic' — dose–response and limits for hypofractionated regimens such as SBRT/SRS, and also covers tumor control probability (TCP) for several sites.

PENTEC — Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. / Clinical Oncology

'Pediatric Normal Tissue Effects in the Clinic' — compiled by 150+ experts across 18 organ-specific working groups, focused on dose–volume–risk relationships in pediatric radiotherapy.

Emami 1991 tolerance tables — historic classic

The historic classic tables of organ tolerance doses, cited thousands of times and the origin of the work above. All of the above are journal publications (some open access, some by subscription); the constraint tables are widely reproduced in reviews and treatment-planning systems.

eContour — econtour.org

A free, online, case-based interactive contouring atlas with 3D scrollable imaging and contours, compiling consensus recommendations by disease site and OAR, updated regularly.

Free, requires a (free) account; web-based only, no downloads.

NRG Oncology / RTOG contouring atlases — nrgoncology.org

A series of consensus contouring atlases from NRG (formerly RTOG) — e.g., male/female pelvic normal tissue, upper-abdominal organs, hippocampus — used to standardize contouring for clinical trials.

Free on the official site; some items require a free login.

Head-and-neck OAR international consensus (Brouwer et al., 2015) — Radiotherapy and Oncology

A multi-institution (DAHANCA/EORTC/GORTEC/NRG, etc.) consensus for head-and-neck OAR delineation, adopted as the standard by many auto-segmentation datasets and trials.

AAPM TG-263 nomenclature standard — aapm.org

The standardized nomenclature for radiotherapy structures and dose — an important foundation for cross-institution data integration and interoperability.

Radiogenomics Consortium (RGC) — epi.grants.cancer.gov/radiogenomics

An international collaboration founded in 2009 and supported by NCI, pooling multi-center cohorts to study genetic susceptibility (SNPs, etc.) to radiotherapy toxicity, with extensive work across prostate, breast, lung, head-and-neck, and other cancers.

Through collaborative research; data is mostly shared via member cohorts and partnerships.

REQUITE — requite.eu

An RGC-led prospective project that collected standardized clinical, biological, and genotype data for ~5,000–5,300 lung/prostate/breast cancer patients, with a centralized database and linked biobank, used to validate predictive models and biomarkers for radiotherapy toxicity.

Centralized database and biobank, available via application/collaboration.

RadioPharm — idrblab.org/radiopharm

A comprehensive database of radiopharmaceuticals, covering therapeutic and diagnostic radioactive drugs, their isotopes, targeting mechanisms, and clinical applications. Developed by the Innovative Drug Research and Bioinformatics Lab (IDRBLab) at Zhejiang University.

TCGA / GDC (Genomic Data Commons) — portal.gdc.cancer.gov

Multi-omics characterization (genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic, proteomic) of 20,000+ samples across 33 tumor types, with clinical and survival data; accessed through the GDC Data Portal with built-in analysis tools.

2.5+ PB of multi-omics data. Open-access data free to download; controlled data requires dbGaP authorization.

cBioPortal for Cancer Genomics — cbioportal.org

A portal for visualizing and exploring cancer genomics data (including TCGA and many study cohorts), well suited to quick queries of gene alterations and clinical associations.

Free, web-based, no registration.

Proteomic Data Commons / CPTAC — pdc.cancer.gov

The proteomic node of CRDC, hosting CPTAC and other clinical proteogenomic data.

NIST XCOM / mass attenuation coefficients — nist.gov

A database of photon cross sections and mass attenuation coefficients for elements, compounds, and mixtures.

Free online query.

NIST ESTAR / PSTAR / ASTAR — nist.gov

Stopping-power and range tables for electrons, protons, and helium ions — a common reference for particle therapy and dosimetry.

Free online query.

ICRU / ICRP reports — icru.org / icrp.org

International authoritative standards for radiation quantities, dosimetry, and protection. ICRP offers many free PDFs; ICRU reports are generally paid publications.

Nuclear data libraries (ENDF/JANIS, etc.) — nndc.bnl.gov / oecd-nea.org/janisweb

Evaluated nuclear data libraries used for neutron and other particle transport in advanced Monte Carlo modeling.

3D Slicer + SlicerRT

A free, open-source platform for medical-image visualization and analysis; the SlicerRT extension adds nearly 20 radiotherapy modules (DICOM-RT read/write, deformable registration, dose comparison, etc.). Cross-platform (Windows/Mac/Linux).

Open-source (BSD).

matRad — DKFZ

An open-source multimodality dose-calculation and inverse-planning toolkit supporting photons, protons, and carbon ions, with bundled CORT example patient data. Runs in MATLAB or free under Octave.

Open-source (GPL v3). Actively developed.

CERR — Computational Environment for Radiotherapy Research

A classic open-source radiotherapy research platform for importing, analyzing, and comparing plans, supporting reproducible algorithm development. Written in MATLAB.

Open-source.

OpenTPS — opentps.org

A newer open-source treatment planning system, written in Python, focused on proton therapy and research use.

Open-source.

Plastimatch — plastimatch.org

An open-source toolkit for image registration and DICOM-RT conversion, integrated by SlicerRT and others.

Open-source (BSD).

PyRadiomics — pyradiomics.readthedocs.io

The open-source standard library for radiomics feature extraction (IBSI-aligned), extracting ~1,500 features from images and masks, with a 3D Slicer front-end extension.

Open-source (3-clause BSD).

dicompyler-core — github.com/dicompyler

A lightweight Python library for parsing DICOM-RT and independently computing DVHs and dose data — well suited to scripted analysis.

Open-source.

DVH Analytics — github.com/cutright

An open-source application that imports DICOM-RT plan data into a SQL database, providing plan comparison, benchmarking, outcome prediction, and a web-based interface.

Open-source.

Monte Carlo simulation tools

Geant4 — CERN's general-purpose particle-transport toolkit; open-source and free.
TOPAS — A Geant4-based wrapper aimed at proton/particle therapy; free for research use (registration required).
GATE — Geant4-based, for imaging and dosimetry simulation; open-source.
EGSnrc — The Canadian NRC's electron–photon transport system (including BEAMnrc linac modeling); open-source and free.
MCNP / PENELOPE — Controlled distribution; license must be requested via RSICC / NEA.

Contact us at radbionet@outlook.com