dcmv

dcmv is a cross-platform terminal-based DICOM image viewer. It displays DICOM images and their metadata directly in the terminal.

This is an initial non-interactive implementation. The purpose is a quick preview of DICOM files without leaving the terminal.

In modern terminals that support image protocols (e.g., Kitty, Ghostty, iTerm2, WezTerm), images are displayed in higher resolution.

TL;DR

Terminal without image support	Terminal with image support

Examples

Display multiple DICOM files (no metadata)

dcmv *.dcm

Display one DICOM file extra wide, with metadata

dcmv file1.dcm -W 80 -v

Display one DICOM file extra wide, with metadata, forcing lower quality

Piping the output to cat, less -r, or any other program will disable the high-resolution image protocol. Image will be lower resolution.

dcmv file1.dcm -W 80 -v | cat

Download DICOM file using curl and display it

curl -s https://marketing.webassets.siemens-healthineers.com/9af51e5a5a75528f/915124f7f1b1/IMG-0001-00001.dcm | dcmv

Use StoreSCP to receive and preview DICOM instances

Server/StoreSCP (from dcmtk):

# Listen on port 10400, saving incoming files to /tmp/dicom,
# printing them with height of 20, with filename and metadata:
storescp 10400 -od /tmp/dicom/ --exec-on-reception "dcmv #p/#f -vF -H20"

Client:

# send example file to the SCP
dcmsend localhost 10400 file1.dcm

Installation

Use Cargo to install dcmv from this git repository:

cargo install dcmv --git https://github.com/realcundo/dcmv

Limitations

The goal is to have a quick previewer, not a fully featured DICOM viewer. That said, the more files are supported, the better.

Currently

• not all terminals and all operating systems are fully supported.
• no windowing or LUT support
• not all transfer syntaxes are supported
• multiframe DICOM files are partially supported (the first frame is displayed)

Adding additional support might be possible, depending on whether upstream crates (dicom-rs and gdcm-rs) make it possible.

Usage

dcmv <FILE> [<FILE2> ..]

Options

• <FILE>: One or more DICOM file paths.
• -W, --width <WIDTH> (optional): Set the output width in terminal columns.
• -H, --height <HEIGHT> (optional): Set the output height in terminal rows.
• -v, --verbose (optional): Show DICOM metadata.
• -F, --filename (optional): Show filename before the image.

License

dcmv is dual-licensed under both the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses. See LICENSE-MIT and LICENSE-APACHE for full details.