Free Online Dental X-ray Viewer
A DICOM file is the format every dental X-ray device writes: intraoral sensors, panoramic units, cephalometric arms and CBCT scanners. Each .dcm file holds one radiograph plus a header naming the device, the exposure settings, the pixel spacing, and the patient. A browser can open one without installing any software.
Keep every radiograph on the patient record
DodoDentist stores X-rays, CBCT exports and intraoral scans against the patient and the tooth, alongside charting, treatment planning, reminders and billing.
Try DodoDentist freeA radiograph exported as a JPEG is only the picture. The same radiograph as DICOM carries the acquisition alongside it: which device produced it, the exposure settings, the physical size of a pixel — which is what makes a measurement in millimetres possible — and the window presets the manufacturer thought best suited the image. That is why practices are told to archive the DICOM and treat the JPEG as a copy for sending.
The header also holds the patient name, identifier and date of birth. It is easy to forget, because none of it appears in the image: a file that looks anonymous on screen can still name the patient to anyone who opens it. Anonymise before a radiograph leaves the practice for a laboratory, a study, or a second opinion.
| Format | What writes it | What it holds | Identifies the patient | Opens on this page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DICOM (.dcm) | Intraoral sensors, phosphor plate scanners, panoramic and cephalometric units, CBCT scanners | One radiograph plus a header describing the acquisition | Normally yes — the header carries the patient name, identifier and date of birth | Yes, when the file is single-frame and its pixel data is uncompressed or lossless JPEG |
| JPEG or PNG | An export or a screenshot taken from imaging software | The picture only, with no acquisition data attached | Not unless the details were burned into the image itself | No — any photo viewer already opens it |
| STL, PLY or OBJ | Intraoral scanners, dental laboratories, 3D printing software | A 3D surface mesh; PLY stores a colour per vertex, STL stores none, OBJ keeps colour in separate files | No — a mesh has no patient header of any kind | No — the STL, PLY and OBJ viewers do |
| CBCT export (folder or .zip) | Cone beam units | Hundreds of single-frame DICOM slices that together form one volume | Yes — every slice carries the same DICOM header | One slice at a time; the CBCT viewer takes the whole folder |
Periapicals and bitewings come from an intraoral sensor or a phosphor plate scanner and show one or two teeth at a time — caries between teeth, root canal length, apical lesions, bone level. A panoramic covers both arches, the jaw joints and the sinuses in one wide image. A lateral cephalogram is the side-of-skull view orthodontics is planned from. All three are single-frame images that a viewer like this one opens directly.
CBCT is the exception. A cone beam scan is a three-dimensional volume delivered as a folder of hundreds or thousands of DICOM slices, often zipped, sometimes with a bundled Windows viewer. Opening a single slice from it shows one thin cross-section rather than the volume, so a CBCT needs dedicated software that reconstructs the stack. Open a whole CBCT folder instead to scroll the slices in order rather than opening them one at a time.
An intraoral scanner does not produce radiographs. It captures the surface of the arches and writes a 3D mesh, usually STL — the same format 3D printers consume. Because both files arrive from "the scanner", they get conflated constantly. The rule is simple: anything involving radiation produces DICOM, and anything optical produces a mesh. One more trap sits on top of it — 3Shape names its own mesh case files .dcm, so the extension alone cannot be trusted, and this page identifies files by their contents instead.
Worth knowing if you export from an intraoral scanner: STL stores geometry only and cannot carry colour. The colour model you see on the scanner survives export only as PLY, which stores colour per vertex, or as OBJ with a separate material and texture file. Export as STL alone and every model arrives grey. Open an .stl file, a .ply file or a .obj file to see the same arch as a mesh rather than as a radiograph.
Dental units and laboratories send files under names nobody recognises. A Carestream export is a .tw, an exocad project is documented as a .dentalproject, Medit writes a .meditMesh, and a CBCT slice frequently has no extension at all. None of them is broken, and none of them says what it is on the outside. Identify any dental file by its contents, or unpack a vendor export bundle to reach the radiographs and scans stored inside it.
DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) is the standard format every X-ray device writes, including dental intraoral sensors, panoramic units, cephalometric arms and CBCT scanners. A .dcm file holds the image itself plus a header describing how it was acquired — the device, the exposure settings, the pixel spacing, and identifying details about the patient.
Drop it onto this page. It is read by your browser and drawn on screen, with no upload and no signup. For everyday clinical work a practice normally uses its imaging software or its practice-management system instead.
Yes, and there is no signup. It exists so dental professionals can open a radiograph a colleague or a laboratory sent them without hunting for software first.
No. The file never leaves your computer. That matters more here than for most tools, because a DICOM header normally carries the patient name, ID and date of birth alongside the image.
Single-frame radiographs, which is what intraoral sensors, phosphor plate scanners, panoramic units and cephalometric arms produce: periapicals, bitewings, panoramics (OPG) and lateral cephs. Uncompressed and lossless-JPEG pixel data are both decoded, which covers CBCT slices too; JPEG 2000 and JPEG-LS files are identified by name but not decoded.
DICOM records whether low pixel values mean white or black. Viewers that ignore that tag show the radiograph inverted. This one reads it, and the Invert control lets you flip it either way.
A radiograph holds more shades of grey than a screen can show at once. The window is how wide a range is mapped onto the visible greys; the level is the centre of that range. Narrowing the window raises contrast over a smaller range, which is how a bone level or an apical lesion is brought out.
Not as a volume. A CBCT export is a folder of hundreds of slices, and opening one here shows a single cross-section. The CBCT viewer on this site takes the whole folder, sorts the slices into order and lets you scroll through them; reconstructing them into a true three-dimensional volume still needs dedicated software.
Not in this viewer — an STL is a 3D surface mesh rather than a radiograph, so it needs a different renderer. Drop one here anyway: the page identifies it by its contents and links straight to the STL viewer, which draws the mesh in the same browser and with the same no-upload promise.