Scroll a cone beam volume slice by slice in the browser
A CBCT scan is a cone beam volume exported as a folder of hundreds of single-frame DICOM slices, often zipped and sometimes bundled with a Windows viewer. A browser can sort those slices numerically and show them one at a time, so a dentist can scroll the volume without installing anything.
Keep every cone beam scan on the patient record
DodoDentist stores cone beam exports, radiographs and intraoral scans against the patient and the tooth, alongside charting, treatment planning, reminders and billing — so the next person who needs the scan does not have to be emailed a zip.
Try DodoDentist freeA cone beam scan is not a file. The unit reconstructs a volume and writes it out as a stack of single-frame DICOM images, one per axial slice, and hands you the folder. Each file is one thin cross-section; the folder is the study. That is why a colleague who says they have sent the CBCT sends a zip, a folder or a disc rather than an attachment, and why double-clicking any one file shows a single grey slice instead of the scan.
The order of those files is not cosmetic. The slice order is carried by the file name, so the stack is only anatomically correct if the names are sorted the way a human counts. An ordinary alphabetical sort puts 3DSlice10 immediately after 3DSlice1, which interleaves the volume and makes scrolling jump around the jaw. This page sorts numerically before it draws anything, which is the single most important thing it does.
A real export usually carries more than slices. There is often a DICOMDIR index, a preview image, a few XML sidecars describing what the operator saw, and a bundled viewer program. The index is a DICOM file with no picture in it, so a naive viewer picks it up as slice one and fails on it. This page identifies every file by its contents, keeps the slices, and ignores the rest.
Drop the zip and it is expanded in the browser, in memory, before anything is read as an image. Nothing is sent anywhere to make that happen. Vendors also rename their containers: a Carestream bundle arrives as a .tw file that is a perfectly ordinary zip underneath. Because the container is recognised by its first four bytes rather than by its extension, a renamed export opens exactly like a plain one.
Only ZIP is expanded here. A 7-Zip or RAR archive needs its own decompressor, so extract those on your computer and select the folder instead. The same goes for an export that arrives as a disc image.
It scrolls the axial slices the unit exported, with the level and window controls that make bone, root and airway readable, and an invert control for the units that store their images the other way round. That is enough to check that an export is complete and readable, to find the slice a colleague referred to, and to read which machine acquired it and when.
It does not reconstruct. There is no multiplanar view, no coronal or sagittal reslice, no volume rendering, no panoramic curve drawn through the arch, no nerve tracing and no implant planning. Saying so plainly is more useful than implying more, because the limit is not an oversight: all of those need the whole stack resident in memory at once.
The arithmetic is what settles it. A 651-slice volume of 553 by 553 pixel slices at 16 bits — the shape a Carestream CS 8200 3D writes — is around 800 MB once every slice is decoded for display. A browser tab will not hold that. So slices are decoded on demand, a few dozen are kept, and the neighbours of the one you are looking at are prepared quietly in the background. That design is what makes a cone beam volume openable in a browser at all.
For planning an implant or measuring a lesion, use the unit software or a dedicated workstation, where the reconstruction and the calibration are part of the medical device. For the far more common question — what did they actually send me, and is it readable — this page answers it in a few seconds without an install.
Two neighbours of this page cover what a cone beam viewer should not pretend to open. A single radiograph — a periapical, a bitewing, a panoramic or a ceph — is one image rather than a stack: open it in the DICOM viewer. An intraoral scan is an optical surface mesh with no radiation in it at all, usually STL, PLY or OBJ: open it in the 3D model viewer.
Many exports ship with a viewer program next to the slices. It is normally a Windows executable, which is no help on a Mac or a tablet, and installing an unfamiliar program is not a decision every practice can make on a shared machine. The slices beside it are ordinary DICOM files and are the part worth keeping: any conforming viewer, including this page, reads them.
German-speaking practices say DVT, for digitale Volumentomographie. English and Italian practices say CBCT or cone beam, Portuguese says feixe cônico and Spanish haz cónico. They all describe the same acquisition: a cone-shaped beam and a single rotation, reconstructed into a volume. It matters here only because it changes what you type into a search box, not what comes out of the machine — the export is a stack of single-frame DICOM slices either way.
| Export | What it is | Files | On this page |
|---|---|---|---|
| CBCT volume | One cone beam acquisition reconstructed into axial slices | Hundreds to thousands of .dcm files | Opens, one slice at a time |
| Zipped CBCT export | The same stack in a container, sometimes under a vendor extension | One archive | Expanded in the browser, then opens |
| Single radiograph | A periapical, bitewing, panoramic or cephalometric image | One .dcm file | Use the DICOM viewer |
| Intraoral scan | An optical surface mesh of the arches, with no radiation involved | One STL, PLY or OBJ, sometimes with a material file | Use the 3D model viewer |
| Vendor viewer bundle | The slices plus a program the vendor ships to read them | A folder holding an executable | The slices open, the program is ignored |
| JPEG or PNG export | A flattened picture of one image, with the header dropped | One image file | Any photo viewer opens it |
There is no upload endpoint on this page. The archive is expanded, the slices are sorted and every image is decoded by your own browser, which is why the tool keeps working with the network off once the page has loaded. It matters here more than almost anywhere else: a cone beam volume is a named patient, their date of birth and a three-dimensional record of their skull, and a DICOM header carries all of that inside every single slice.
Drop the export onto this page. The archive is expanded and the DICOM slices are sorted and drawn by your browser, so there is no viewer to install and no file to upload. You get the stack one slice at a time, which is enough to see what was sent and to read how it was acquired.
Yes. The zip is expanded in your browser and its slices are read straight from memory. An export renamed by the vendor is recognised too: a Carestream .tw bundle is a zip under another extension, and the container is identified by its first bytes rather than by its name.
Because the file name carries the slice order, and an ordinary alphabetical sort puts 3DSlice10 immediately after 3DSlice1. Sorted that way the volume is interleaved and scrolling jumps around the jaw. This page sorts the slices numerically before it draws anything.
No. It scrolls the axial slices the unit exported, in order, one at a time. There is no multiplanar reconstruction, no volume rendering, no panoramic reslice and no implant planning. Those need the whole stack held in memory at once, which is what a browser tab cannot do for a volume of several hundred slices.
No. There is no upload endpoint on this page. The files are read with the browser File API and decoded on your own machine. That matters more here than for most tools, because a DICOM header normally carries the patient name, identifier and date of birth alongside the image.
A CBCT export is hundreds of separate files. The browser reads the leading bytes of every one of them to identify it, expands the archive when there is one, sorts the slices and then decodes the first image. That is real work, so a progress line stays on screen until the first slice is drawn.
Yes. DVT, short for digitale Volumentomographie, is what German-speaking practices call cone beam computed tomography, and cone beam, feixe cônico and haz cónico all name the same acquisition elsewhere. Whatever it is called, the export is a stack of single-frame DICOM slices.
A single .dcm file is one radiograph rather than a volume, and it opens in the DICOM viewer. An intraoral scan is a surface mesh in STL, PLY or OBJ and needs a 3D model viewer. Drop either onto this page and it will say what the file is instead of failing silently.