A patient arrives with a CBCT disc from another practice, or a surgeon emails a zipped DICOM folder. This page is for dentists, practice managers and clinic IT staff who need to open that data without buying another imaging suite, and who wonder whether a small practice needs a PACS.
The short answer: first run the viewer the sending vendor put on the disc. If it will not start, or you are on a Mac, ask for a plain DICOM export and open it in Sante DICOM Viewer Lite, which is free and actively maintained. InVivoDental Viewer and K-PACS still circulate but are legacy. The open-source projects at the end solve IT and physics problems, not viewing.
The short list
| Program | Best for | Licence | Platforms | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sante DICOM Viewer Lite | Any CBCT export or patient CD | Free | Windows, macOS | Active, 5.4.0 |
| Dentsply Sirona Sidexis 4 | Sirona units; free disc viewer | Shareware (conditionally free) | Windows | Active, 4.4.1.2 |
| Carestream Dental CS Imaging 8 | Carestream units; free Lite viewer | Shareware (conditionally free) | Windows | Active, 8.0.36 |
| Vatech Ez3D Plus | Older Vatech CBCT cases | Shareware (conditionally free) | Windows | Discontinued |
| OnDemand3D Dental | CBCT planning, any scanner | Shareware (conditionally free) | Windows | Active |
| DEXIS Imaging Suite | 2D capture with DEXIS sensors | Shareware (conditionally free) | Windows | Active, DEXIS 10 |
| Gendex VixWin Platinum | Existing Gendex sites | Commercial, no free viewer | Windows | Legacy, 3.6.5 |
| Apteryx XrayVision | Enterprise capture (DCV) | Commercial, no free viewer | Windows | Version 4 discontinued |
| InVivoDental Viewer | Old .inv case files | Free (proprietary) | Windows | Legacy |
| K-PACS | Learning DICOM networking | Free, non-commercial only | Windows | Legacy |
| Mango | Research ROI statistics | Free, non-commercial research | Windows, macOS, Linux | Dormant, 4.1 |
| dcm4che | Testing DICOM links | Free, open source (MPL/GPL/LGPL) | Windows, macOS, Linux (Java) | Active, 5.35.1 |
| OpenREM | Radiation dose audit | Free, open source (GPLv3) | Server, web browser | 1.0 in beta |
| dicompyler | Radiotherapy research | Free, open source (BSD) | Windows, macOS, Linux | Archived, 0.4.2 |
Sante DICOM Viewer Lite
Sante DICOM Viewer Lite from Santesoft is the viewer to install on a consultation PC. It opens DICOM from any manufacturer, reads patient CDs and shows axial, coronal and sagittal slices with distance, angle and area tools. The Windows build adds 3D rendering; the macOS Lite build is a separate product focused on 2D and MPR. The licence allows any number of installs. Limits: no panoramic curve, nerve tracing or implant library, and Santesoft states no FDA or CE clearance. Pro adds anonymising and disc burning.
Dentsply Sirona Sidexis 4
Sidexis 4 is the capture and viewing suite for Orthophos, Axeos and Xios/Schick hardware. The full program needs a licence and dealer installation. What matters to recipients is the free, read-only Sidexis 4 Viewer that “DICOM Export Wrap&Go” places on patient discs: run “Start Sidexis 4 Viewer.exe” on a Windows PC, accept the .NET prompt if it appears, and wait while it imports the cases. There is no Mac viewer and no standalone public download. If the disc fails, ask the sender for the third-party DICOM volume export instead.
Carestream Dental CS Imaging 8
CS Imaging 8 keeps 2D X-rays, CBCT volumes and STL data from Carestream units in one Windows program. For recipients, the useful part is CS 3D Imaging Lite: when a practice exports a volume to CD or USB, you run ViewData.exe, which installs the Lite viewer and opens the case. Lite is review-only; planning needs the licensed software. Carestream warns that 3D rendering and edge enhancement must not be used on their own for diagnosis, so read the unfiltered slices. There is no Mac version.
Vatech Ez3D Plus
Ez3D Plus is discontinued: Vatech no longer supports it or issues licence keys, and Windows 11 is not supported. You still meet it regularly on older discs from Vatech practices. Its successor Ez3D-i exports cases with a free Simple Viewer in “Original” and lighter “Lite” versions; try Lite on a PC with a modest graphics card. Mac is not supported. If neither viewer starts, a plain DICOM export opened in Sante DICOM Viewer Lite is quicker than fighting graphics drivers.
OnDemand3D Dental
OnDemand3D Dental from Cybermed reads CBCT DICOM from any scanner and adds panoramic and cross-sectional views, implant planning with manufacturer libraries, TMJ and airway tools, and optional 3D cephalometrics. A trial runs after installation, and a free Project Viewer or disc viewer lets recipients open shared cases. Installers and manuals sit behind Cybermed’s customer login, so the current version is not public. Choose it when a practice without its own vendor suite needs real planning on referred scans, not just viewing.
DEXIS Imaging Suite
DEXIS Imaging Suite (the DEXIS 10 generation) is 2D software: intraoral and extraoral X-rays, photos, automatic mounting and practice-management bridges, with the optional DEXassist AI add-on. Its images use the .dex format. It runs on Windows only; DEXIS handles CBCT in the licensed DTX Studio Clinic. DEXIS has offered a free DEXview viewer for .dex files, but it dates from the DEXIS 9 era, so check with DEXIS support that it still runs on your Windows version, or ask the sender for standard image or DICOM exports.
Gendex VixWin Platinum
VixWin Platinum is Gendex’s Windows capture and mounting program, owned by DEXIS since 2022. The last version we could confirm is 3.6.5 from 2022. It is commercial, licensed with the hardware, and has no free viewer or demo, so it will not help someone who only needs to open images. Many practices still run it today; the natural upgrade is DEXIS Imaging Suite. An independent IT firm has reported support ending in 2027, but DEXIS has not published a date.
Apteryx XrayVision
Apteryx XrayVision, now part of Planet DDS, is device-agnostic capture and storage software. Classic XrayVision 4 is discontinued: sales ended in 2021, support at the end of 2022 and its registration server went offline in 2023. The enterprise XrayVision DCV (3.5.6) is still offered, and XVWeb is the cloud successor. None has a free viewer, so if a colleague sends XrayVision images, ask for DICOM or standard image exports. Its published system requirements are outdated, so check with Planet DDS support first.
InVivoDental Viewer
InVivoDental Viewer was Anatomage’s free Windows viewer for .inv files, which bundle the scan with the sender’s work-up, such as nerve tracings and implant positions. It is legacy. The dental business moved to Osteoid in 2021, which no longer offers the viewer and points users to Invivo Workspace, a commercial browser platform you can try free. Copies on download sites are not verified. No general DICOM viewer opens .inv, so ask the sender to share through Workspace or export DICOM.
K-PACS
K-PACS is the classic free mini-PACS for Windows: a viewer, a local study database, a DICOM receiver with query/retrieve, and CD burning. The last version is 1.6, the vendor no longer lists it among its free tools, and its staff have said it is for evaluation and non-commercial use only. It has no dental tools and dates from the Windows XP/7 era. It is still a good way to learn AE titles, ports and store/query on a test PC, not for patient data.
Mango
Mango, from the Research Imaging Institute at UT Health San Antonio, opens DICOM and NIfTI volumes on Windows, macOS and Linux, with ROI painting, volume statistics and surface rendering. Its licence limits it to non-commercial research and education and excludes clinical use, so it belongs in a thesis project, not at the chair. The last desktop release, 4.1, is from 2019, so some recent compressed exports may not open. More research tools are in our open-source imaging toolkits hub.
dcm4che
dcm4che is a free Java toolkit with more than 50 command-line tools, updated in August 2026. It is not a viewer. Clinic IT uses it to prove a DICOM link works: start storescp as a test receiver, point the CBCT unit at it and see whether files arrive. dcmdump shows why a viewer rejects a file, and deidentify anonymises teaching cases. If you searched for an “open source DICOM server” with a web interface, that is the sister project dcm4chee, an archive built on this toolkit.
OpenREM
OpenREM is free radiation dose monitoring software that began at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. It runs on a server and turns dose data from X-ray, CT and fluoroscopy equipment into charts and spreadsheets for a medical physicist. The stable release is 0.10.0 (2019); the 1.0 beta can import panoramic exams. Nothing documents intraoral or dental CBCT support, so it suits a dental hospital or school whose physicist already runs it. Expect Docker or Windows Server administration, not a desktop install.
dicompyler
dicompyler is a free viewer for radiotherapy data: CT with RT structures, dose overlays and dose-volume histograms. The repository is archived and the last release, 0.4.2, is from 2014. Its only dental link is head-and-neck radiotherapy research and teaching, such as reading jaw dose from a DVH. It also has a DICOM tag browser and an anonymiser plugin for teaching datasets. It is not a CBCT viewer and not a clinical tool; use it only on anonymised, archived research datasets.
How to choose
- Received a disc? On Windows, run the vendor viewer on it first.
- Viewer fails, or you use a Mac? Ask for an uncompressed DICOM export with a DICOMDIR and open it in Sante DICOM Viewer Lite.
- Proprietary files (.inv, .dex) need the vendor’s viewer; ask for DICOM instead.
- Need to plan on the scan? A viewer is not enough; use your own vendor suite or OnDemand3D.
- Need a PACS? A PACS is an archive that receives images from devices over the DICOM network, stores them and lets workstations query and retrieve them. A one-site practice with one vendor suite already has a database and mainly needs tested backups. A shared archive pays off when several devices or sites must see the same studies. Test links with dcm4che first.
FAQ
Where can I download InVivo Dental Viewer?
There is no official download any more. Osteoid points users to Invivo Workspace; third-party copies are unverified.
Is K-PACS still free?
It costs nothing, but the vendor restricts it to evaluation and non-commercial use, and it has not been developed since version 1.6.
What is the best free DICOM viewer for dental CBCT?
For practice use, Sante DICOM Viewer Lite. For research, Mango, within its non-commercial licence.
Is there a free open-source DICOM server?
dcm4chee is an open-source archive built on the dcm4che toolkit, which itself includes a test receiver (storescp).
How do I open a Sidexis or Carestream disc on a Mac?
Neither vendor offers a Mac viewer. Ask for a plain DICOM export and open it in the macOS edition of Sante DICOM Viewer Lite.
Is there free dental imaging software for X-ray capture?
Not really: capture software comes licensed with the sensor or unit. The free options are viewers.
Last updated: 29 September 2026 · SoftProDents editorial team. Licence, version and platform details are checked against each developer's official documentation; none of the tools listed here should be treated as a certified medical device unless its vendor says so.
