Mango

Mango (short for Multi-image Analysis GUI) is a free viewer for medical research images, developed at the Research Imaging Institute of UT Health San Antonio (the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio). It is built for researchers and students who need to look inside 3D volumes from CT, MRI, PET and SPECT, draw regions of interest, build surfaces and get statistics. Mango was designed for brain imaging research. It has no dental module, but it opens DICOM CT and CBCT volumes, so dental researchers and educators can use it for general 3D viewing and ROI work.

Mango is free, but only for educational and scientific, non-commercial use. Its licence says the software and data derived from it may be used only for research and not for clinical purposes. Anyone looking for a Mango viewer download to review patient scans in a practice should read that restriction first.

Mango at a glance

What it does

• Opens Analyze, DICOM, NEMA-DES, MINC, NIfTI and NIfTI-2 images, with partial support for TIFF and some scanner-specific formats. Version 3.6 added more compressed DICOM formats, colour data and overlays.
• Orthogonal slice viewing with a “world space” mode that shows coordinates as millimetre distances from the origin.
• ROI editing with threshold- and component-based painting and tracing tools, plus morphological operations (dilate, erode, shrink wrap) added in 4.1.
• Image and ROI statistics, histograms and cross-section profiles, with results exportable as CSV.
• Surface rendering with cut planes and overlays, surface ruler and angle tools, and export of surfaces in VTK (legacy) and GIFTI formats.
• Image registration (semi-automatic coregistration and manual transform editing) and overlay stacking with thresholds and transparency.
• DICOM header editing with an Anonymize button, and “Create Webpage”, “Create Video” and “Create Snapshot” for sharing views.
• Plugins (Java API) and Python scripting, plus command-line converters such as convert2nii.

How dental teams use it

Viewing a CBCT volume for a research project

1. Open the DICOM series exported from the scanner.
2. Check the voxel spacing in the image info. Mango’s own guide stresses that measurements need correct spacing metadata and ideally small, isotropic voxels.
3. Scroll axial, coronal and sagittal slices and adjust the colour table and window for bone.

Measuring a region’s volume

1. Use the threshold or paint ROI tools to outline a structure, such as a cyst-like lesion or a graft area, across slices.
2. Open ROI Statistics for the current volume to get voxel count, volume, mean and standard deviation.
3. Export the statistics as CSV for your study spreadsheet.

Building a 3D surface for teaching

Build a surface at a bone-level threshold, smooth it, and use cut planes to show internal anatomy in a lecture. Save snapshots or a video, or use Create Webpage to share an interactive view built on the Papaya browser viewer. Mango exports surfaces as VTK or GIFTI, not STL, so use a different tool if you need a printable model.

Install and first run

• Desktop: separate downloads are offered for Mac, Windows and Linux (version 4.1), plus archived older versions.
• Browser: Papaya is the JavaScript version of the viewer and runs in current browsers, with no installation for the person viewing.
• iPad: iMango is on the App Store. Its listed requirement is very old (iOS 5), and the last documented update is from several years ago, so check that it still installs on your iPad.
• Plugins: install them with Options > Plugin Manager > Add Plugin, and restart to remove one.
• Gotcha: the surface viewer needs OpenGL. If a surface builds without errors but the window stays blank, update the graphics drivers. For other errors, open the Console from the Window menu.

Limitations

• Not for clinical use. The licence restricts it to research and non-commercial education.
• No dental tools: no panoramic curve, nerve canal tracing, implant library or cephalometric analysis.
• Development has slowed. The last desktop release, 4.1, dates from 2019, so newer DICOM variants from recent scanners may not open.
• No STL export for 3D printing.
• The built-in plugins focus on brain research (for example brain extraction and Talairach normalisation) and are not useful for dental data.

Mango vs alternatives

FAQ

Is Mango viewer free?

Yes, for educational and scientific non-commercial use. It may be used only for research, not for clinical purposes, and commercial use needs written consent from UT Health San Antonio’s Research Imaging Institute.

Can Mango open DICOM files?

Yes. Mango reads DICOM, including several compressed variants, as well as NIfTI, Analyze and MINC. The Edit Header dialog can anonymise DICOM headers.

Is there a Mango DICOM viewer for Mac?

Yes. Mango 4.1 has separate downloads for macOS, Windows and Linux.

What is the difference between Mango, Papaya and iMango?

Mango is the desktop program, Papaya is the browser-based JavaScript viewer, and iMango is the iPad app. They share file formats and customisation files such as ROIs and colour tables.

Can Mango open NIfTI (.nii) files?

Yes. NIfTI and NIfTI-2 are supported, and the bundled convert2nii utility converts other formats to NIfTI.

Can I use Mango to view my patients’ CBCT scans?

Its licence does not allow clinical use. For practice work, use a clinical viewer or your scanner vendor’s software.

Last checked against official sources: 28 September 2026 (developer website: mangoviewer.com). Versions and licence terms change — confirm on the developer's site before deploying in a clinic.