Compare

Compare

CBCT viewers for dental students compared

Seven ways to open a dental CBCT without a hospital workstation, what each costs, what each can do, and which one fits the situation you are actually in.

How this comparison was made

Platform, price and license were checked against each project's own site in October 2026; sources are linked in the text. Feature cells describe what the tool does out of the box for a student opening a CBCT export; "Partial" means the capability exists but needs an extension, a manual workflow or a paid tier. We make JawAtlas, so read its column with that in mind; we have tried to be as plain about its limits as about everyone else's.

The table

JawAtlas

JawAtlas is a free iPhone and iPad app for studying CBCT anatomy: tri-planar MPR, panoramic reconstruction from a traced arch, GPU volume rendering, a free oblique slice, millimetre and angle measurements, and AR slice-through on a table. It has no accounts, no analytics and no networking code, so a scan never leaves the device. It ships with an anonymised demo mandible and opens DICOM folders or ZIP archives.

What it does not do is the honest part. There is no segmentation, no registration, no DICOM networking or PACS query, no plug-ins, no scripting, no ROI statistics and no density readouts. It opens one series at a time, is tuned for typical dental fields of view rather than whole-head datasets, and it is an education and training aid, not a medical device. If you need any of the missing items, you need a desktop tool.

3D Slicer

3D Slicer is the research platform of this list: free, open source under a BSD-style license, and available for Linux, macOS and Windows. Its documentation states that it is not approved for clinical use and is intended for research (About 3D Slicer). It does segmentation, registration, volume rendering, Python scripting and has hundreds of extensions. A dental panoramic view is possible with the Curved Planar Reformat module from the Sandbox extension, which straightens the volume along a curve you draw. The price is the learning curve: expect an afternoon before the interface feels natural.

Horos

Horos is a free, open-source macOS viewer under the LGPL 3.0, descended from OsiriX; the current release targets Apple Silicon and macOS 26 (horosproject.org). It gives you a full radiology-style workstation: 2D viewing, 3D MPR, volume rendering, DICOM networking and plug-ins, and its training site lists a curved MPR lesson. It is not FDA cleared or CE marked, so it is for study and research, not for patient diagnosis. If you own a Mac and want one desktop viewer, this is a strong free choice.

OsiriX Lite and OsiriX MD

OsiriX comes in two editions, both macOS only. OsiriX Lite is the free demo of OsiriX MD: 3D MPR, 3D curved MPR and 3D rendering are demo-only, and every image carries a "NOT FOR MEDICAL USAGE" tag. OsiriX MD is the full, paid product, listed from $69.99 per month, cleared by the FDA as a Class II device and CE labelled as Class IIa (OsiriX MD). For a student, Lite is enough to look at a scan; for anyone working with patients, MD is the version that is actually allowed to be used.

RadiAnt

RadiAnt is a fast, polished Windows viewer. It is paid: time-limited subscription plans from one month to five years, priced in euros on the store, each covering one computer, with a free trial that includes all features and expires after a set period (RadiAnt store). It offers 2D orthogonal MPR, 3D MPR with MIP, MinIP and average modes, and GPU volume rendering (3D MPR manual). We found no curved MPR or panoramic feature in its manual. A good choice for a Windows user willing to pay for something that just works.

Weasis

Weasis is free and open source, dual-licensed EPL 2.0 or Apache 2.0, with installers for Windows, macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon) and Linux (Weasis FAQ). It has oblique MPR with a shared crosshair, MIP and volume rendering, full DICOM networking, and since version 4.7.1 a curved MPR in which you trace the dental arch and choose "Build Panoramic View" or "Build Cross-Sectional Slices" (Curved MPR tutorial). Its FAQ states that the open-source distribution is not a certified medical device. Of the desktop tools here it is the closest match to the JawAtlas pano workflow.

OHIF Viewer

OHIF is a free, open-source, MIT-licensed viewer that runs in the browser with nothing to install (ohif.org). It does 2D, MPR, MIP and volume rendering, and it is really a platform: many institutions build their own viewers on it. For a student the catch is that it needs a server to load studies from, so "offline" means running a local instance, which is a developer task. Its site makes no clinical claim either way; treat it as a research and development tool.

What the desktop tools do that JawAtlas does not

Segmentation and 3D model export (Slicer, Horos, OsiriX, RadiAnt). Registration of two scans (Slicer, Horos, OsiriX). DICOM networking: query a PACS, receive from a scanner, send studies (Horos, OsiriX, Weasis, RadiAnt, OHIF). Plug-ins and scripting (Slicer, Horos, OsiriX). Research pipelines with reproducible batch processing (Slicer, OHIF). Multiple series and modalities side by side, fusion, and very large datasets (all desktop tools). Certified clinical use (OsiriX MD only, in this list). JawAtlas trades all of that for a device that is always with you and a design that teaches.

Which should you pick

Studying on the go. JawAtlas. Load the demo scan or a dataset from free CBCT datasets, work through how to read a CBCT scan, and keep moments for revision. Nothing else runs on a phone, offline, for free.

Preparing a lecture. Weasis or Horos on the laptop for screenshots, curved MPR and multi-series layouts, plus JawAtlas on an iPad for the live part: the 2x2 grid on a projector and AR for the demonstration. Share the case to students afterwards; see JawAtlas for educators.

Research pipeline. 3D Slicer, without hesitation. Segmentation, registration, scripting and an extension ecosystem; OHIF if the deliverable is a web tool. JawAtlas can serve as the portable viewer for showing results, not as the pipeline.

Clinic. A cleared product: OsiriX MD on a Mac, or whatever your institution licenses. None of the free tools above, JawAtlas included, is a medical device, and none should be used for diagnosis or treatment decisions.

JawAtlas is an education and training aid. It is not a medical device and must not be used for diagnosis, treatment planning or any clinical decision.

Last reviewed 2026-10-13