What are the best Free DICOM Viewer to Open your Medical images?

Have you ever experienced endless waiting to open patient images? Or lost precious minutes trying to load patient information onto your tablet? It's a waste of time you could do without, and now there's a solution! All you need to do is find the right DICOM viewer for your specific needs.

What is a DICOM file or DICOM image?

DICOM stands for “Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine”. It is an international standard for medical imaging. A DICOM file consists of a header and image data sets packed into a single file. The information within the header is organized as a constant and standardized series of tags. Inconveniently, in contrast to other image file formats such as JPEG or TIFF, DICOM files are not recognized by Operating System (Windows®, Mac) as image files. To view these images on your computer, you will have to use a DICOM viewer, which will interpret the file information and display it as an image.
We’ve only selected online web-based DICOM viewers, not software that needs to be downloaded and installed, because it will save time for healthcare professionals. This is particularly useful when doctors are far from their workstations.. Some of the listed services in this article don’t require user registration. However, we highly recommend that the user carefully read the privacy policy.

Let’s check the results:

DICOM Library

• What it does: DICOM Library is a free online service that offers advanced features for sharing, downloading, and deleting DICOM files. DICOM Library supports multiple modalities and PACS models. Files are anonymized before being uploaded. 
• What makes it different: Some features that stand out include multiple-layout, zoom, pan, windowing, magnifier, measuring and drawing. Moreover, it supports touch screens and is easy to share. Finally, a multi-lingual support is available.

⚠ Upload images to a web server (confidentiality is not guaranteed)
⚠ Cannot load an entire folder

Particularly suitable for: 

• Anonymous sharing of DICOM images
• If DICOM images are embedded in a website, blog or forum

IMAIOS DICOM Viewer

• What it does: It is a free online DICOM viewer. The interface is very user-friendly: you just have to drag and drop your file to open. It supports any DICOM file and offers tools for review, manipulation and MPR. IMAIOS offers a user-generated database of clinical cases (e-Cases) as well, making it an ideal educational tool.
• What makes it different: no registration is required and no file is uploaded on the IMAIOS server, which means the privacy policy is guaranteed. The fluidity of images is awesome when scrolling through the images. The presentation mode is an invaluable tool for use with a projector during a lecture. It allows the user to highlight specific anatomic areas with different colors and the pointer, draw on the image to show an exact anatomical structure and choose the thickness of the line.

⚠  It is not possible to create a patient case

Particularly suitable for: 

• Medical students, doctors and radiologists
• Researchers
• Users looking for a multi-platform tool (accessible from mobile apps)

Medicai Free Online DICOM Viewer

• What it does: Medicai is a web-based DICOM viewer; data is stored locally. It offers a comprehensive range of features, including zoom, measurements, windowing, etc.
• What makes it different: no download or installation required. The tools available are very useful.

⚠ Not available on tablets or mobile devices

Particularly suitable for: 

• Medical students, doctors and radiologists
• Researchers

DicomViewer.net

• What it does: DicomViewer is a browser based DICOM viewer. It is very comprehensive in terms of features, the interface is quite intuitive.
• What makes it different: no download or installation required. The tools available are very useful. The MPR works well.

⚠ Cannot be used on tablets or cell phones

Particularly suitable for: 

• Doctors and radiologists
• Researchers

Post DICOM

• What it does: Post DICOM is an online radiology/ DICOM-sharing service. It provides a cloud with 50GB of free space for uploading, organizing and sharing DICOM files, and it comes with a powerful DICOM viewer.
• What makes it different: you can organize your files as well as search cases by patient name, patient ID or case number. The display functions are large: window level, pan, zoom, rotation, thickness and scroll functions. You can anonymize the DICOM.

⚠ Free access is not unlimited: it is subject to a 7-day trial period and requires the creation of a cloud account
⚠ Anonymization must be enabled by the user, and the quality of anonymization depends heavily on the user's configuration

Particularly suitable for:

• Medical students, doctors and radiologists

Now that you know what the 5 best web-based DICOM viewers are, it is time to assess your needs and measure them by asking the following questions:

• What features do you prioritize?
• Which ones are less important to you?
• What is your current workflow, and how can a particular program fit into that workflow? 

We hope that you found valuable information here to facilitate your everyday work as our main concern is about helping and forming human and animal caregivers. 

Comparative table - DICOM viewer

* Free only during the 7-day trial period