The best free software solutions for DICOM images

Radiant Viewer Mac Download Windows 10
Radiant Viewer Mac
Radiant Viewer Mac Download Mac

Please note: There are many free DICOM viewers online, however many lack the core functionality required by a radiologist for reviewing studies and/or teaching. All software on this page has been downloaded / tested by a consultant radiologist and thought to represent the best currently available online. This page is updated regularly.

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!

Download radiant dicom viewer 64-bit for free. Photo & Graphics tools downloads - RadiAnt DICOM Viewer by Medixant and many more programs are available for instant and free download. Thank you for downloading RadiAnt DICOM Viewer from our software portal. The version of the program you are about to download is 5.5.1. The software is licensed as trial. Please bear in mind that the use of the software might be restricted in terms of time or functionality.

DICOM stands for 'Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine'. It is the standard for handling, storing, printing, and transmitting information in medical imaging. DICOM viewing software allows radiology trainees and consultants to view and manipulate medical images (such as radiographs or MRI scans) on their own PC, laptop or tablet. In the hospital environment, this forms part of the picture archiving and communication system (PACS), which doctors will be familiar with!

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.

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!

Software for Apple MacOS

Radiology Cafe's top pick:

Main features

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)

System requirements

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.

Radiant Viewer Mac Download Windows 10

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!

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:

Main features

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..

System requirements

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: 1024x768 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:

Main features

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 compara