Open your study here, free
Drag your study's CD, folder, .zip or .dcm files.Choose your study's .zip or .dcm files. They open right in this browser, with window/level, millimeter measurements, multiplanar reconstruction and a 3D view. No account, nothing to install.
Or drop the files here. Accepts .dcm (even without an extension), complete multi-file series, the CD's .zip, .nii, .nii.gz and the report PDF.
To view it, your study is not uploaded anywhere
The file is read and drawn inside your browser. It doesn't travel to our servers. Neither do your measurements or your report: they live in this tab's memory and vanish when you close it, so they leave no trace even on a shared computer. The only thing that leaves is what you choose to send: if you request the link for your doctor, the study is encrypted on this very device before upload, the key travels inside the link and never reaches us, and the file is deleted when it expires.
Not for primary diagnostic reading
A formal diagnosis is issued on radiology-calibrated monitors. This tool is for reviewing, measuring, comparing and walking your patient through the study — not a replacement for the reading station.
Free, no account
View any DICOM or NIfTI series, or the PDF that comes on the CD
Window and level, zoom, cine and series comparison
Measurements in real millimeters, angles and annotations
Multiplanar reconstruction (MPR) and 3D view
Write the report and export or print it
Download your own files as a zip
Needs an account
Save the study to a patient's record
File the signed report next to the visit note
Keep measurements and key images across sessions
Receive studies straight from your machines via worklist
Share the study with the patient without burning a CD
Quick answer
How to open your X-ray online, step by step
Copy the study to your computer
Copy the whole folder from the CD or USB drive. An X-ray study is small compared to a CT — usually one to a handful of files — but the files often have no extension: IM000001 without a .dcm suffix is still DICOM.
Open the files in the viewer above
Click “Open my X-ray” and select the files, or drag the folder onto the dotted area. On a desktop the “Open a folder” button loads everything at once; on iPhone and iPad the folder picker doesn’t exist, so select the files directly or use the .zip from the center.
Let the image load at full depth
The viewer decodes the complete detector matrix on your machine — thousands of pixels per side, 10 to 16 bits of gray per pixel. Nothing is uploaded; the browser’s Network tab will confirm it if you are curious.
Adjust brightness and contrast
Drag to re-window the image. This is the step that separates a DICOM viewer from a photo app: the same chest film reveals lung markings at one setting and rib detail at another. The image opens with the adjustment the technologist stored.
Zoom and measure
Zoom into the region the report mentions — the resolution is there for it — and trace lengths or angles if you want to follow what was measured. Values are calibrated from the data in the file.
Share it or export it
Generate the encrypted link to send the actual study to your doctor, or export what you need. When the tab closes, the viewer keeps nothing.
CR and DX: what a digital X-ray file really is
Film went away; the radiograph didn’t. Today’s X-rays are born digital in one of two ways, and the modality code in your file tells you which. CR — computed radiography — still uses a cassette, but inside it a phosphor plate records the exposure and a reader digitizes it afterwards. DX — digital radiography — skips the cassette entirely: a flat-panel detector captures the image and hands it to the system seconds after the exposure.
| CR (computed radiography) | DX (digital radiography) | |
|---|---|---|
| Capture | Phosphor plate in a cassette, digitized by a reader | Flat-panel detector, direct capture |
| Workflow | A digitizing step between exposure and image | Image available almost immediately |
| Where you meet it | Older or portable equipment | Most current fixed rooms |
| The file you get | DICOM — opens in this viewer | DICOM — opens in this viewer |
Either way, what reaches your disc is a DICOM file holding the full detector matrix: typically thousands of pixels on each side, with 10 to 16 bits of grayscale per pixel where an ordinary photo has 8. That surplus is not decoration — it is the raw material for everything the next section does.
Brightness and contrast: reading an X-ray like a radiologist
A radiograph compresses the whole thickness of your body into one image, and its thousands of gray levels hold tissues from air to metal. Your screen can show only a fraction of those levels at once, so which fraction you display is the reading decision. That is what window and level do — the same adjustment CT viewers apply, here without Hounsfield calibration, working directly on the image’s gray scale.
In practice: drag until the structure you care about separates. On a chest film, a brighter, wider setting brings out the fine vascular markings of the lungs; a darker, narrower one lets you follow each rib’s cortical outline. On an extremity film, one setting shows soft-tissue swelling, another the trabecular pattern inside the bone. The viewer opens with the presentation the technologist stored, so the first thing you see is roughly what the clinic saw — everything after that is you exploring data a printed film would have frozen forever.
The zoom deserves its own habit: radiography detail is real detail, not interpolation. Zoom into the exact region the report names and read it at native resolution before forming any impression from the thumbnail-sized overview.
Measuring on an X-ray: useful, with one honest caveat
The viewer measures lengths and angles over the image, calibrated from the data the file carries — which is how clinicians follow angles in orthopedics or compare a distance against the previous film. The caveat is geometry, not software: a radiograph is a projection. The X-ray beam spreads from a point, so structures sitting farther from the detector cast a slightly magnified shadow. For everyday review this barely matters; for surgical planning, clinics place a calibration marker of known size next to the anatomy precisely to correct it.
So measure freely — to understand the report, to follow an angle over time, to ask a better question at your appointment — and let exact numbers for clinical decisions come from your doctor’s reading. If your study is a different modality, the measuring rules change with it: a CT volume measures in true three-dimensional millimeters, and an ultrasound frame leans on the sonographer’s live calipers.
Sharing your X-ray with your doctor
The worst common way to share a radiograph is the most popular one: photographing the screen. The photo freezes one window setting, kills the zoom, and makes measurement meaningless — it hands your doctor a picture of an X-ray instead of the X-ray. Sending the DICOM file itself is the right move, and this page gives you a safe channel for it.
Ask the viewer for a sharing link and three things happen on your device before anything travels: the study is encrypted locally, the decryption key is placed in the link’s “#” fragment — the one part of a URL browsers never send to servers — and only the sealed bytes are uploaded. We cannot open what we store. The link expires after 72 hours, admits a limited number of opens, and can be revoked; afterwards the file is deleted. Your doctor clicks it and gets the real image, with window, zoom and measurements intact. Lose the link, though, and nobody can recover the study — including us.
For clinicians: from the browser tab to the patient’s chart
This free viewer opens the X-ray the patient brought and forgets it when the tab closes. A practice needs the opposite: today’s film next to last year’s, the image filed with the visit, and access from every room.
The same viewer engine ships inside Healthy Record’s clinical records: upload the study once and it stays in the patient’s history.
Access is per user, and every consultation of the image is logged.
Radiographs sit alongside the patient’s CTs, MRIs and reports — one chart, not a drawer of CDs.
There is a 14-day trial; everything the free page opens is described in the online DICOM viewer overview.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my X-ray look too dark or completely washed out on my computer?
Because a digital X-ray stores far more gray levels than your screen can show at once, and whatever program you used picked one fixed slice of them. In a DICOM viewer you adjust the window — brightness and contrast over the full bit depth — and the detail reappears: one setting shows the lung markings, another the bone texture. The data was always there; the photo app just could not reach it.
Can I measure angles on my X-ray, for example for orthopedics?
Yes — the viewer traces lengths and angles over the image, using the calibration recorded in the file. One physics caveat worth knowing: a radiograph is a projection, so structures farther from the detector appear slightly magnified, which is why clinics use calibration markers for surgical planning. Use the measurements to review and discuss the study; decisions based on exact values belong to your doctor.
What is the difference between CR and DX in my file?
Two generations of the same idea. CR (computed radiography) exposes a reusable phosphor plate in a cassette that a reader then digitizes; DX (digital radiography) captures the image directly on a flat-panel detector. For viewing they behave the same — both are DICOM files, and this viewer opens both. If your file says CR, the equipment was cassette-based; DX means direct capture, usually with somewhat crisper detail.
How do I send my X-ray to my doctor without losing quality?
Not by photographing the screen — that copy loses the ability to adjust contrast and to measure, which is most of what makes the image useful. From this viewer you can generate a sharing link instead: the study is encrypted on your device before upload, the key travels only inside the link, and the link expires after 72 hours. Your doctor opens the actual DICOM image, adjusts it, and measures on it.
Why is a single X-ray file 20 or 30 MB?
Because the detector is huge and precise: a chest radiograph is captured on a matrix of thousands by thousands of pixels, each stored with 10 to 16 bits of gray instead of the 8 bits of an ordinary photo. That resolution and bit depth are exactly what lets you zoom into trabecular bone detail and re-window the image — the size is the feature, not a fault.