The archetype reader was useful because it allowed a saved scene to refer to existing DICOM files. However, this does not work anymore (since the change that forces the file name to be the same as node name on save).
I think we should also consider David Gobbi’s vtk-DICOM package. It is the most comprehensive open-soruce DICOM image reading/writing solution - it can read multiframe, cine, multidimensional, compressed, gantry-tilt images and it can also write several image IODs (see more info here and here). It’s small, clean, simple, supported and continuously improved by David.