DICOM viewer

DICOM viewer for CT and CBCT scans: slice navigation, window/level adjustment, millimeter measurements and panoramic reconstruction with paraxial slices. Processing is local; studies are never uploaded.

Everything runs in your browser: the study is never uploaded to any server.

What this tool does

How it works

  1. 01

    Load the study

    The full CBCT ZIP or loose .dcm files. The main series is detected automatically.

  2. 02

    Navigate and adjust

    Wheel to change slices, right-click drag for brightness/contrast, distance and angle tools.

  3. 03

    Rebuild the panoramic

    Trace (or auto-suggest) the arch curve on the axial slice and get a panorex plus perpendicular cuts.

Frequently asked questions

Is it safe for patient studies?

The study is processed entirely in your browser: there is no upload, no intermediate server and no record of any kind. Closing the tab leaves nothing behind, not even in cache, because the ilove3d DICOM viewer releases its references and purges memory on unmount. That matters in a particular way in imaging: a tomography study is identifiable health data, and uploading it to a free online viewer to look at it for five minutes is a confidentiality problem however sincerely the site promises to delete it. Here the file never leaves the machine, so the question of what the server does with it never arises. Unlike other viewers in this space, there is also no URL to paste: the study loads from your own disk, as a ZIP or as loose .dcm files. Nothing needs to be installed either, which matters when the machine you are sitting at belongs to a clinic and you cannot add software to it.

Which DICOM files does it support?

CT and CBCT series made of individual slices, and also enhanced multi-frame files, which are a single .dcm with hundreds of slices packed inside. It handles uncompressed studies as well as those compressed with JPEG Lossless, JPEG 2000 and RLE, which covers essentially everything clinical equipment exports. You can load a complete ZIP exactly as the imaging centre hands it over, or drag in loose .dcm files. If the ZIP contains several series — it commonly also carries screen captures, reports or reconstructions made by the scanner itself — the ilove3d DICOM viewer identifies and uses the main series rather than mixing them together, which is what produces those jumbled slice stacks in simpler viewers. If a study will not open, the first thing to check is that the ZIP holds the .dcm files themselves rather than a folder containing a proprietary viewer, which is what some centres hand over.

Are measurements in real millimeters?

Yes, provided the study includes the pixel calibration, which in the DICOM standard is the pixel spacing field and is present in practically every CBCT and CT scanner. With that value the viewer knows how many millimetres each pixel covers, and the distances you measure are physical rather than relative. If the field is missing — which happens with some secondary captures and with studies passed through software that re-compresses them — the ilove3d DICOM viewer tells you explicitly and switches to measuring in pixels, instead of showing a millimetre figure that would be invented. It is a distinction worth keeping in mind: a viewer that always shows millimetres without saying where they came from may be assuming a calibration the file never carried. Measurements are taken on whichever slice you are viewing, so it pays to position yourself on the correct plane before recording a distance.

What is the panoramic (panorex) view?

It is a reconstruction that unrolls the dental arch along a curve traced over the axial slice, equivalent to the traditional panoramic radiograph but computed from the tomographic volume. Instead of a single projection, the ilove3d DICOM viewer additionally shows the slices perpendicular to that curve — the paraxials — which let you see each tooth in section and measure the available bone height and width, which is what implant planning needs. The curve can be adjusted by hand by dragging its control points, and the viewer proposes an initial parabola by automatically detecting where the bone sits. All of that computation runs locally on the volume you already loaded, with nothing sent anywhere. The reconstruction recomputes on its own as you move the curve, with a short delay so it is not rebuilt on every pixel you drag it through.