Top 20 FREE DICOM Viewers for doctors: Windows, Linux and Mac OSX

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DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) is the international standard to transmit, store, retrieve, print, process, and display medical imaging information. The Following is a list of the best free DICOM viewers for doctors.

We have covered several categories for DICOM viewers, here what we covered so far:

Free Online Web-based DICOM viewers are online cloud services that display upload or remote DICOM files or folders with DICOM specific browser. Here is a compiled list of cloud DICOM viewers.

In this article we have covered the best free and open source DICOM viewers for many platforms. This list is always updated with emerging and new software regularly, so stay tuned.

Free & Open source enterprise-grade DICOM viewers

1- Navegatium DICOM Viewer

Incredibly easy to use, Navegatium has an absolutely intuitive touchscreen interface, works perfectly on Windows 10 and Windows 8.1 tablets, laptops and PCs and can be installed directly from Windows Store. It makes out list of Best Free & Open source PACS Clients & DICOM Workstations, because of its outstanding features.

It is capable of 2D, 3D and X-Ray reconstructions with DICOM images.

We have written a snap preview about Nevegatium, you can read it here.

2- Sante DICOM Viewer Free version

Sante DICOM Viewer Free can be used as a stand-alone desktop application, but also it is suitable for DICOM CD/DVD distribution. It runs from CD/DVD without installation, it does not have any additional software requirements like .NET or Java run-time libraries, and opens automatically the DICOMDIR file in the root of the CD/DVD.

Sante DICOM Viewer Free

Sante DICOM Viewer Free supports all the modalities (CT, MR, US, CR, NM, XA, MG, DX etc.), all the manufacturers, and all the DICOM file types (DICOM 3.0/NEMA 2).

3- MicroDicom: Free DICOM Viewer for Windows

MicroDicom is an application for primary processing and preservation of medical images in DICOM format.
It is equipped with the most common tools for manipulation of DICOM images, and it has an intuitive user interface. It is free for non-commercial use.

4- Horos DICOM Project: Open source DICOM viewer for Mac OSX

Horos is a free, open-source medical image viewer. The goal of the Horos Project is to develop a fully functional, 64-bit medical image viewer for OS X. Horos is based upon OsiriX and other open-source medical imaging libraries. Horos is made available under the GNU Lesser General Public License, Version 3 (LGPL-3.0).

Horos has been featured several times in our list reviews:

5- JiveX DICOM Viewer

This free DICOM Viewer offers not only to review radiology images but also other types of medical data such as ECGs or information in pdf files – as long as the data is available in DICOM format. Thus the DICOM Viewer provides all users with access to important information far beyond radiology.

Data can be loaded onto the Viewer from an internal folder or from external media such as CD, DVD or stick. Unlike the licensed Review Client the free DICOM Viewer cannot be linked to the PACS. Technical service is not included.
It is available for non-commercial use (research or educational purposes).

6- AMIDE: Open source Multi-platform DICOM workstation for Linux, Windows and Mac OSX

AMIDE is a completely free and open source tool for viewing, analyzing, and registering volumetric medical imaging data sets.

AMIN DICOM src

• Platform: Linux, Mac OSX, Windows
• AMIDE DICOM viewer website

7- 3DimViewer

3DimViewer is a lightweight free and opensource 3D viewer of medical DICOM datasets that is distributed as open source software.

3DimViewer — src

• Platform: Linux, Mac OSX , Windows
• 3DimViewer Link

8- postDICOM

postDICOM is a secure environment for patients, doctors, clinics and hospitals. Using postDICOM, users can Post medical DICOM images (computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound, digital radiography etc.) and clinical documents (scanned documents, reports, patient’s history etc.) to cloud. Later, users can view and share these documents with doctors and medical groups. Uploaded DICOM files are streamed using sophisticated HTML5 zero footprint lossless DICOM viewer.

• Platform: Cloud-based
• postDICOM

9- SMILI DICOM viewer

The Simple Medical Imaging Library Interface (SMILI), is an open-source, light-weight and easy-to-use medical imaging viewer and library for all major operating systems. The main sMILX application features for viewing n-D images, vector images, DICOMs, anonymizing, shape analysis and models/surfaces with easy drag and drop functions. It also features a number of standard processing algorithms for smoothing, thresholding, masking etc. images and models, both with graphical user interfaces and/or via the command-line. SMILI is in active development by his developers.

SMILI DICOM viewer

• Platform: Linux, Mac OSX, Windows
• Website, Download

10- Mango

Mango – short for Multi-image Analysis GUI – is a viewer for medical research images. It provides analysis tools and a user interface to navigate image volumes.
Mango is available for use, as is, free of charge, for educational and scientific, non-commercial purposes. Mongo also made it in our featured list as one of the : Best Free & Open source PACS Clients & DICOM Workstations for Windows, Mac OSX, & Linux.

11 — Aeskulap

Aeskulap is a very famous DICOM mmanager/ and viewer on Ubuntu/ Debian linux.
Platform : Linux

12 — NextCloud : Cloud based DICOM Viewer

NextCloud is a free opensource self-hosted cloud file sharing solution, It provides security, solid user management and set of desktop and mobile clients which support synchronisation. NextCloud AppStore has DICOM viewer which is full featured DICOM viewer ready to work for teams and hospitals.

Platforms

• Server : Linux, Clients : Mac OSX, Windows, Linux. Mobile Apps Android and iPhone, web browsers desktop and mobile.

13 — Athena DICOM Viewer

Free DICOM viewer

Athena is a lightweight DICOM software, designed to display DICOM images on Windows machines. It’s available in the Windows app store and offers an in-app purchase for additional options an features. Athena has a very simple custom design built for touch screens including Windows Tablets and wide resolution touch screens. Athena Lite edition comes with one month free for Athena pro editions which can be extended later with purchase. Athena was built by native windows technology so it’s expected to be memory wise with smooth performance.

14 — ClearCanvas DICOM server and DICOM Viewer

ClearCanvas is an open source medical imaging project featuring DICOM server and features-rich DICOM viewer for Windows with DICOM viewer.

ClearCanvas DICOM

• Platform : Windows , Web viewer
• ClearCanvas Website , ClearCanvas Sourceforge

15- MatrixUser

MatrixUser is a lightweight GUI-based program for multi-dimensional data processing and analysis for medical imaging.

• Highly Interactive Graphical User Interface
• Multi-dimensional Matrix Display and Analysis in Matlab
• Multiple Data Type Conversion for DICOM, DICOM (Batch), NIFTI, MAT and Binary
• Nice DICOM Viewer and Convertor
• ROI Analysis, Segmentation, 3D Slicer and More Functions

16- Miele-LXIV: Open source DICOM Workstation for MacOSX

Miele-LXIV is an open source DICOM workstation and viewer for Mac OSX, It’s completely native solution built by apple technologies, It supports 10.9 macOSX version and later, which means it’ll work on old Mac OSX machines.

Miele-LXIV has many features that we have covered in this review.

17- SIVIC: Open source DICOM MR Spectroscopy Framework for Researchers, and Radiologists

SIVIC is a customised DICOM MR Spectroscopy framework for researchers and radiologists, created by Nelson Lab.

18- Gimias: Medical Imaging Framework/ Simulation

Gimias: is an open source framework for building medical Imaging & medical simulation applications for Windows and Linux

19- Yakami DICOM tools:

YAKAMI DICOM tools is a free lightweight DICOM viewer, & converter for Windows, we have reviewed it here.

Highlights

• Lightweight
• Easy to install, & use
• Works smoothly on old and new machines/ systems
• Suitable for novice users, & advanced users
• Supported languages: English, Japanese

20- Navegatium: (Windows)

Navegatium is a Free 2D/3D DICOM Viewer with 3D Printing support for Windows. It’s full-featured DICOM viewer and PACS workstation for Windows, it supports Windows 7 and later.

Navegatium comes with full touch support for Windows-tablets, We have written a full review about it in here.

Highlights:

• DICOM / PACS Client
• 3D Printing on demand
• 3D Volume rendering
• Reports generation
• Navegatium Knowledge Base: Huge library of DICOM images

Navegatium’s Homepage

21- JimboDICOMViewer

JimboDICOMViewer is a free 2D/ 3D DICOM viewer to display and manage DICOM datasets and databases. It has unique features, but it’s available only for Linux and macOS.

Hospital Information Systems (HIS)/ EMR with DICOM viewer

Some Hospital Information systems are built with DICOM viewer to ensure the usability for DICOM files. Here is a list of free open-source hospital information systems some comes with complete DICOM and PACS integration.

DICOM / PACS viewing software

The best free software solutions for DICOM images

Sometimes it’s useful to be able to view and manipulate medical images such as X-rays, CT or MRI scans on your own PC, laptop or tablet. This is particularly important when preparing teaching files or practising for your radiology exams. Finding a good free DICOM viewer can be tricky, especially as there are so many options out there. We have tested may different applications (so you don’t have to) and the following are our best picks. We grouped them according to the operating system used because unfortunately there aren’t any free viewers that run on both!

Software for Apple MacOS

Software for Microsoft Windows

Online viewers

What is DICOM viewing software

A popular software for radiologists working in the UK is currently a programme called ‘Horos’. This is a free open source version of the software used by the Royal College of Radiologists for the viva part of the Final FRCR 2B exam, so obviously it makes sense to use it for teaching as well. This programme is only available on Apple computers, hence why so many radiologists own MacBooks.

There is a paid version of Horos called ‘OsiriX MD’, which is produced by Pixmeo, however it is expensive so not ideal for basic teaching purposes, although has great functionality. Pixemo also produce a free demo version called ‘OsiriX Lite’, however there are major limitations placed on this including pop-ups asking you to upgrade to the paid version, performance restrictions, image viewing restrictions and inability to edit the meta-data attached to DICOM images — for example you can’t easily re-order series within a study, which may be important if you are preparing cases for teaching or examinations. It is for these reasons that we do not list OsiriX Lite in our recommendations.

OsiriX-UK user Group

• The OsiriX UK user group are a group of Radiologists in the UK who are keen on digital radiology education and use OsiriX/Horos for teaching. The aim is to achieve a nationally agreed consensus on how cases are collected, organised and used for teaching and examination and thereby achieve a collective common ground/platform/standard for radiology education across the country. The resources on this site are amazing so we recommend you visit it now!
• http://www.osirix-ukusergroup.org

Software for Apple MacOS

Radiology Cafe’s top pick:

• Intuitive user interface and customisable toolbars
• 64-bit
• Advanced manipulation and measurement tools
• Multi-planar reconstruction (MPR) with thick slab (Mean, MIP, Volume Rendering)
• 3D MIP, 3D Volume rendering, 3D surface rendering
• Image fusion for PET-CT & SPECT-CT
• Reads and displays all DICOM files
• DICOM Editing
• OsiriX migration assistant
• Separate iOS app to view DICOM on mobile devices (requires iOS 13.0 or later)
• more feature details.

• OS: MacOS 10.11 or later

Horos should run on any Mac brought within the last 3 years.

Why we like it

We really like Horos as it is a free open source version of the same software as that used by The Royal College of Radiologists for the viva part of the final FRCR (Part B) exam. Becoming familiar with Horos will help radiology trainees when preparing for this exam. Horos is easy to use and as a full 64-bit medical image viewer for Mac there is a huge amount of functionality contained within. It is updated regularly. We believe Horos is the best free DICOM viewer for Apple MacOS.

Interestingly, Horos is named after the Egyptian god Horus, son of Osiris and Isis. Horos is a based on OsiriX (a similar paid-for medical viewer), named after Osiris. The developers obviously appreciate Egyptian and greek mythology!

Visit the Horos website to download the Horos DICOM viewer!

Radiopaedia plugin for Horos

• There is a useful Mac plug-in for Horos that allows you to quickly upload selected studies / images to Radiopaedia, a free educational radiology resource with one of the web’s largest collections of radiology cases and reference articles.
• User guide and installation guide:
  https://radiopaedia.org/blog/radiopaedia-plugin-for-horos-osirix

Software for Microsoft Windows

Radiology Cafe’s top pick:

• Simple and intuitive interface with full-screen mode
• Standard manipulation and measurement tools
• Browse several series concurrently in multiple windows with automatic synchronization between series and cross reference lines in series with different image planes
• Display of dynamic sequences/series (CINE)
• Multiplanar Reconstruction (MPR)
• Fusion of series with different modalities (e.g. PET-CT) or different protocols (e.g. MRI T1/T2–DWI)
• Huge range of DICOM file types supported and support for DICOM overlays
• Export DICOM files to JPEG, BMP and WMV.
• Copy and paste directly into Word or PowerPoint documents
• Read DICOM studies from CD/DVD/BluRay disks and local or network folders
• Asynchronous reading (browse images while they are being opened)
• Multi-core and multi-processor support, and advanced memory management system which facilitates concurrent opening of studies with thousands of images
• Universal installer (32 and 64-bit)
• Multilingual interface (>20 languages)
• Multi-touch support
  more feature details.

• OS: Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP (SP3)
• Processor: Intel or AMD 1GHz or faster (multicore Intel processor recommended)
• Memory: 512MB of RAM (2GB recommended)
• Hard Disk Space: 9MB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required for image caching
• Screen Resolution: 1024×768 minimum

Why we like it

We really like RadiAnt as it is free, simple, easy to use and very fast. Watch this YouTube demonstration video to see RadiAnt in action. It is downloaded as a single compact application with an installer size of approximately 5MB. The application can even run directly from a USB stick! This basic DICOM viever does all the things you would expect and is perfect for revision purposes for radiology trainees.

Visit the RadiAnt website to download the RadiAnt DICOM viewer!

Radiology Cafe’s one to watch:

• Designed mainly for CT and MR DICOM modalities
• 3D reconstruction and volume rendering
• Multi-planar and oblique slicing
• Easily anonymize and de-identify patient scans
• Fast surface extraction and export to STL and PLY formats
• Load DICOM data directly from PACS, CD/DVD, USB or local computer
• Patient search to locate patient data on your PACS
• Loads common non-DICOM file formats: NifTi (.nii), Visualization Toolkit (.vtk), and ANALYZE (.hdr)
• Window/level (brightness and contrast) presets
• Screen capture
• Axis-aligned cropping with context
• Side-by-side comparative assessment
  more feature details.

• OS: Windows 10/8.1
• Processor: Intel i3 or AMD Ryzen 3 (64-bit CPU for data sizes over 100MB)
• Memory: 8+ GB of RAM
• Hard Disk Space: 1GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required for image caching
• Screen Resolution: 1920×1080 or better

Why we like it

We like Pro Surgical 3D as it is fast and easy to use. Although it is designed for surgeons, it’s easy to view patient scans quickly. It works well with studies on CD/DVDs, USB sticks and local DICOM files.

Visit the Pro Surgical 3D website to download the Pro Surgical 3D DICOM viewer!

Radiology Cafe’s top pick:

• Unlimited cloud storage space to store medical images
• Multi-platform (Windows, MacOS, Linux, IOS, and Android) Support
• Upload, store and view DICOM files
• Fast Cloud DICOM imaging loading
• Automatic synchronization of compatible series with showing cross-reference lines
• Standard measurement tools
• Multiplanar Reconstruction (MPR)
• View DICOM metadata
• Share, tag and comment on cases with other professionals
• Enter custom descriptions to cases
• WebGL browser rendering
• PACS integration using the Collective Minds® Proxy
• One click case upload using the Collective Minds® Proxy
  more feature details.

• The following operating systems and internet browsers are supported:
  • Windows: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox
  • Mac OS: Apple Safari, Google Chrome
  • Linux: Google Chrome
  • iOS: Apple Safari, Google Chrome
  • Android: Google Chrome

Why we like it

We really like Collective Minds Radiology as it is a bit different to other sites. It’s a radiology collaboration service and centered around sharing cases with other professionals for expertise, advice or teaching. It is free with unlimited storage, easy to use and fast. As it is cloud based, you can access it on pretty much any device. The service is restricted to medical professionals and sharing can be done to specific groups e.g. your hospital community. The ability for users to comment and tag images is particularly unique and great for learning and teaching.

Visit the Collective Minds website to use the Collective Minds Radiology viewer!

• Free 50GB cloud space to store medical images and clinical documents
• Multi-platform (Windows, MacOS, Linux, IOS, and Android) Support
• Upload, store and view DICOM files
• Upload, store and view non-DICOM clinical documents which are in PDF, BMP, PNG, JPG, MP4 and AVI formats
• Automatic synchronization of compatible series with showing cross-reference lines
• Standard measurement tools
• Ability to anonymize patient data before uploading
• Share patient images with doctors, medical groups, and patients by sending a viewing link and password
• Organize patients into folders and enter custom descriptions to them
• Multiplanar Reconstruction (MPR)
• Maximum Intensity Projection (MIP), Minimum Intensity Projection (MinIP), Average Intensity Projection (AvgIP)
• 3D Reconstruction
• PET-CT, and PET-MR fusion
• Create user groups and manage user Authorizations
• Recycle Bin to prevent accidental deletion
  more feature details.

• The following operating systems and internet browsers are supported:
  • Windows: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox
  • Mac OS: Apple Safari, Google Chrome
  • Linux: Google Chrome
  • iOS: Apple Safari
  • Android: Google Chrome

Why we like it

We really like PostDICOM as it is free (up to 50GB online storage), simple, easy to use and fast once the DICOM images are uploaded. As it is cloud based, you can access it on pretty much any device. This DICOM viever does all the things you would expect and is great for sharing studies.

Visit the PostDICOM website to use the PostDICOM viewer!

So there you have it!

Radiology Cafe’s ‘top pick’ and ‘one to watch’ free DICOM viewers for Microsoft Windows, Apple MacOS and online. Please send us your suggestions for other great free DICOM viewers!