Viewing and manipulating medical/dental images such as CBCT, CT or MRI scans on your computer or tablet may be useful, but limited by licensing or OS incompatibilities. Many free DICOM* viewers operate on Windows and MacOS, but which viewer to choose can be challenging.

Below are my recommended viewers. Please ensure you download the version compatible with your operating system and architecture (32-bit or 64-bit); note that most modern computers utilize 64-bit architecture

Recommended DICOM viewers:

  • MicroDicom is a free, lightweight DICOM viewer for personal use. It features an intuitive user interface, fast performance and MPR features. It can open JPEG, BMP, PNG GDIF and TIFF formats. It also has a CD/DVD/USB version that can be added to DICOM dataset for use on exernal storage.
  • RadiAnt DICOM Viewer A fast, intuitive viewer for Windows with a robust trial version.
  • 3DimViewer A lightweight, open-source 3D viewer available for Windows and macOS.
  • Horos A powerful, free, open-source 64-bit medical image viewer for macOS.
  • PostDICOM A cloud-based solution ideal for viewing scans across multiple devices and operating systems
  • Weasis A robust, open-source viewer available via the Microsoft Store, offering comprehensive medical image interaction for patients and professionals.
  • OHIF Viewer (Open Health Imaging Foundation) A browser-based, open-source platform for viewing and workflow management, ideal for web access without installation. 
  •  Navigatium is a web-based viewer, useful for quick viewing and research

Useful free segmentation software, valuable in understanding the volume and surface areas of various features, such as apical periodonititis:

1.  ITK-SNAP is a free open source software application created at the University of Pennsylvania and funded by an NIH grant. It allows the user to manually and seimi-automatically delineate anatomical regions of interest, also called image segmentation. This software is not for clinical use. More information on YouTube.

2.  3D Slicer (Kitware) is a free open source software funded by the NIH for visualization and semi-automatic and fully automatic image segmentation of medical, biomedical and a variety of 3D images and meshes. This software is not for clinical use. More on YouTube

3. VolView (Kitware) is a free open-source clinical radiological viewer that runs on your web browser and provide photo-realistic, interactive, 3D visualizations using cinematic volume rendering. This software does not upload your data and works without downloading the program.

4. MIPAV is a free DICOM viewer, editor and anonymizer for reseach only: Medical Image Processing, Analysis and Visualization (MIPAV), NIH. Also, MIPAV Anonymize is useful for anonymization.

*DICOM (Digital Imaging and COmmunications in Medicine) is an international standard file format and network communications protocol developed by the American College of Radiology (ACR) specifically for medical imaging.