Dicom Viewers:
1.
RadiAnt Dicom Viewer:
RadiAnt Dicom Viewer is a free light-weight dicom viewing software for Windows which can open almost any dicom file,
query from almost any PACS and even do relatively advanced post-processing such as PET-CT/PET-MR fusion,
3D MPR,
MIP and volume rendering.
The latest beta version can also save full cases within the software itself.
The only downside is that it does not have a dicom server built-in and hence cannot receive images from another dicom node.
2.
ClearCanvas Dicom Viewer
ClearCanvas is also a free dicom viewing software for windows.
Most importantly it can act as a stand-alone PACS when combined with other ClearCanvas viewers or even RadiAnt.
It has the ability to send,
receive and store images within it.
Various plugins are available for printing film,
creating word documents etc.
as well.
The only downside is that it does not have volume rendering capability and is a little slower than RadiAnt.
3.
Horos Dicom Viewer
Horos is the free open-source sibling of Osirix,
the world's most popular image viewing tool for Mac.
It is possibly the most advanced free viewer out there and includes all the features of ClearCanvas and RadiAnt listed above.
Additionally,
it has very robust cardiac angio,
cardiac MR,
breast MR and PET-CT toolkits.
Volumetry,
segmentation,
exporting,
importing – everything is possible.
It is essentially a fully loaded medical image viewing solution – for free!
4.
ITK-SNAP
ITK-SNAP is a medical image viewing software that is solely built for the purposes of segmentation of 2d and 3d structures on medical images.
It is possible to segment structures in 3 dimensions simultaneously thereby reducing segmentation time by a lot.
Most of the work happening in artificial intelligence today uses ITK-SNAP for creating ground truth and every radiologist should know how to use it!
Database Tools
5.
Notepad++
This applies to radiologists or technologists who often need to go through their report databases and pull appropriate cases based on keywords in these reports.
Notepad++ makes you independent in that it can give you the ability to play around with SQL files,
that are typically used to store reports in HIS and RIS systems – all you have to do is ask your IT team for the SQL file,
open it and then search for your appropriate keywords!
6.
FuzzyLookUp
FuzzyLookUp is a plugin for Microsoft Excel that enables the matching of two lists with text on an approximate basis.
You may have noticed that your report database contains the report of ‘Mr.
John Smith' but the dicom image has just ‘John Smith' – well,
FuzzyLookUp will tell you,
like VLOOKUP in Microsoft Excel,
that both ‘Mr.
John Smith' and ‘John Smith' are similar with 95% probability,
making it that much easier to merge databases and find those cases you needed for that research paper!
PACS Tools:
7.
Orthanc PACS Server
We reserve the best for the last.
Orthanc might just be the most powerful tool on this list.
A full-fledged PACS system,
Orthanc can be set-up in less than a minute (yes – it's true!) and gives you the power to store all your images,
dicom push and pull,
view images in a browser (yes!) and even view images on your phone (yes – it's true!).
The only downside is that it requires just a little bit of knowledge of computer programming,
that youtube can teach you,
to be able to maximally utilise it.
Nevertheless,
it is possibly one of the most powerful tools out that that radiologists should definitely know about,
if not use every day.