I’ve had my share of CT and MRI studies over the years, and although I’m no radiologist, I still like to flip through the images and try to make sense about what they’re saying. While some of the observations are very subtle and require a trained eye, others just pop off of the page!
OK, you’ll need two things to review your studies: a copy of the images, and a viewer. Many radiology centers provide a DVD at the completion of your test if you request it. Thankfully, the DVD often comes pre-packaged with a viewer (usually for Windows), so all you need to do is pop the disk into your PC and start flipping through the pics.
My center distributes a copy of RadiAnt with CT/MRI studies. The tool is very powerful, and provides lots of different features – but it only works on Windows! I prefer to do my work on Linux, and a few years back I discovered Ginkgo CADx, which works pretty well, but is no longer maintained. So I recently set out to find the latest DICOM viewer for use on Linux, and came upon AlizaMS. It’s blazing fast, and provides 2D and 3D image rendering that is truly eye-popping (see attached). You can check out their YouTube videos here. You can find release distributions and source code on their GitHub site.