Convert files from a medical imaging CD
Every hospital radiology department uses DICOM. Every imaging CD they hand you contains DICOM files. And almost no patient's home computer has software that opens them. This gap has existed for decades — and the short-term solution hospitals implemented (bundling a viewer on the CD) works only on Windows with an active Java or .NET runtime, and breaks constantly.
The problem has gotten worse as hospital viewers have aged, become incompatible with modern operating systems, or were designed only for the Windows XP era. A patient on macOS Sequoia or a Chromebook gets a CD with a viewer they cannot run.
A browser-based converter sidesteps all of that. It runs in the browser you already have, handles the DICOM format directly, and produces output any device can open. No CD viewer to install. No Java. No Windows dependency.
Open the converter — free, no upload
What to do when the CD viewer doesn't work
- Don't install the CD viewer — skip it entirely.
- Copy the DICOM files from the CD to your computer (the folder named DICOM, IMAGES, or similar).
- Open this converter in your browser.
- Drop the files in, choose your output format, download.
Questions
The CD says it includes a viewer. Should I install it?
Only if you need its clinical tools (zoom, measurements, MPR). For exporting images to share with someone, this browser converter is faster and requires nothing installed. The CD viewer is also frequently out of date and may not run on modern operating systems.
Does this work for ultrasound DICOM too?
Yes — ultrasound commonly writes DICOM files with RGB or YBR color. This converter handles both grayscale and color DICOM.
My CD has both a viewer program and .dcm files. Which should I use?
The .dcm files are the actual data. The viewer program is just software to look at them. Copy the .dcm files and use this converter; the viewer is optional.