dcmview

Open local DICOM files and folders in dcmview directly from VS Code.

dcmview is a fast, temporary DICOM inspection tool for research and development workflows. The extension starts a local loopback dcmview server from the selected file or folder and displays the viewer in a VS Code webview.

dcmview is intended for developer and research inspection, not clinical diagnosis.

Supported Platforms

Marketplace builds currently bundle dcmview binaries for:

• Linux x64
• macOS x64
• macOS arm64
• Windows x64

On unsupported platforms, or when you need to test a locally built binary, set dcmview.binaryPath to an absolute path to a compatible dcmview executable.

Usage

Use the Explorer context menu command Open with dcmview on DICOM files or folders. The extension launches dcmview --no-browser --port 0, waits for the local server URL, and opens the viewer beside your current editor.

The command dcmview: Open Workspace with dcmview opens a selected workspace folder. The command dcmview: Stop All dcmview Sessions terminates extension managed viewer sessions.

When dcmview.terminalInterception.enabled is true, new integrated terminals route dcmview, dcmview-py, and python -m dcmview_py invocations into VS Code webview panels. Set DCMVIEW_VSCODE_BYPASS=1 in a terminal to bypass that integration for a single shell session.

Settings

• dcmview.binaryPath: absolute path to a dcmview binary override.
• dcmview.defaultRecursive: recursively scan selected folders by default.
• dcmview.extraArgs: additional command-line arguments passed to dcmview.
• dcmview.startupTimeoutSeconds: seconds to wait for startup.
• dcmview.terminalInterception.enabled: route integrated terminal launches into VS Code webviews.