5 Best Free DICOM Viewers & PACS Clients for Android Phones & Tablets

There are many great Free Desktop DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) Viewers on the internet, but this is not the case for android devices. There are few Android DICOM Viewers that support opening local files, but the majority require a remote server to access image files.

We have covered several DICOM viewers categories, here what we have covered so far:

• Free & Open source DICOM viewers for Windows
• Open source & Free DICOM viewers (Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows)
• Online Web-based DICOM Viewers & Free DICOM cloud services
• Free & Open source DICOM viewers for Mac OS X
• Best Open source Browser & Web-based DICOM Viewers Projects

Best Free DICOM Viewers & PACS Clients for Android Phones & Tablets

In the following list, we take a look at these apps.

1- mRay:

mRay is CE-Certified DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) Viewer and PACS (Picture Archiving and  Communication System) Client which packs a lot of great features like mRay-VEOcore which supports therapy planning for acute stroke, KI-Tool which provides optimized CT and MRT perfusion analyses and integrated communication system which supports text and audio messages. It doesn't support opening local files yet but the company (mbits imaging GmbH) promised to add this feature in a future update. To be able to receive images in mRay from your PACS, you need the mRay Server Software which is not free.

Highlights:

• CE-Certified
• Photo documentation
• Viewer for computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging  (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), fluoroscopy (XA), digital  x-ray (CR), ultrasound (US)
• Full functional client, no remote desktop viewer
• Secure multi-layer encryption
• mRay-VEOcore which supports therapy planning for acute stroke
• KI-Tool which provides optimized CT and MRT perfusion analyses
• Barcode scanner
• Automatically create structured reports from HL7 orders
• Integrated Instant Messenger which offers a secure  communication platform to share DICOM images as well as key images and  simple text and audio messages
• MPRs
• ROIs
• Windowing, measurements, thick slices and annotations
• Query/Retrieve functionality

2- Symmetry:

Symmetry is a powerful application for visualising, processing, organising and interacting with scientific/medical datasets. It is based on the Simulacrum library which is an open source suite for volume and image space interaction.

Highlights:

• Supports opening files from local storage
• Cross-platform: Windows, Linux and Android
• DICOM/PACS integration
• Simple single-pane viewing or advanced multi-pane light table configuration (most suited to tablets)
• Standard image interaction tools (zoom, pan, window level, scrolling through volumes)
• Advanced image interaction tools (oblique MPR, slab MIN/MIP/AVG, surface rendering, cursor projections, plane localizer, custom hangings/layouts in light table, overlays)
• DICOM/PACS integration (Query/Retrieve and WADO fulfilment, DICOM networking send/receive/echo)
• User extendable though plugins and scripting interface

3- iPaxera:

iPaxera can add studies (DICOM images) from your PC, DICOM CD or flash  memory directly to Device through local synchronization with the USB cable (No need for Wifi/3G connection or a PACS Server).

Highlights:

• Write reports via the embedded reporting tool, and send reports by email or save them with studies
• Built-in dictation tool to record voice files, enabling on-the-go reporting
• Communicate with any PACS via DICOM Query/Retrieve, permitting you to add as many DICOM node parameters as needed
• Supports multiple modalities, including DICOM Cine (multi-frame) with interactive playback controls
• It has easy-to-use processing tools, like window width and leveling with visual presets, distance measurement, panning, zooming, free rotation, snapshot capture, and fast navigation for images/series
• Search by Modality type, Date(All, Today, Yesterday, 2 days, 1W, 2W, 1M and 2M)

4- DroidRender:

DroidRender is a 3D DICOM viewer for Android which has 2D/3D Multi plane reconstruction and full functional 2D render engine.

Highlights:

• DICOM file support by GDCM , support un-compredded / compressed / J2K compressed DICOM format
• 2D/3D Multi plane reconstruction
• Full functional 2D render engine (Gray scale, Color look up table, Maximum intensity projection, Minimum intensity projection, Mean value)
• Full functional 3D render engine (Volume Rendering, Ray casting, Iso surface, Solid shading for above 3 render type, Maximum intensity projection, X-Ray simulation)
• Tissue segmentation and display
• Free slicing for 2D and 3D view
• 3D printing mesh generation

5- simplyDICOM:

simplyDICOM Viewer is a simple open source DICOM Viewer with minimal interface to keep the focus on the images themselves. It utilizes OpenCV and dcm4che libraries.

Highlights:

• Minimal and simple
• Supports opening files from local storage
• Multi-touch Gesture Support

Conclusion:

The good free DICOM/PACS Android Apps are still few and needs more attention to reach the level of functionality that the desktop counterparts offer, considering that Android phones and tablets nowadays have more processing power than before.