DICOM and multi-frame studies
Definition
DICOM is the standard container for medical imaging. A multi-frame study holds a sequence of images in a single file, which is why viewing one needs playback controls rather than page-by-page display.
A DICOM file is an image plus a substantial amount of clinical metadata — patient, study, series, equipment, acquisition parameters. That metadata is the reason DICOM files are treated as protected health information in their own right, quite apart from what the image shows.
Multi-frame is where generic image viewers stop working. A CT or ultrasound series is a sequence meant to be scrubbed through, so display parameters that make no sense for a document — frame delay, loop count, whether to show frames, animation, or both — become essential.
The clinical caveat is worth repeating: a general-purpose viewer is a review tool, not a diagnostic workstation. Diagnostic reading has calibration and regulatory requirements that browser-based viewing does not meet.
In Doconut
DICOM viewing is a separate paid plugin covering .dcm and .ima files, with multi-frame playback and control over horizontal and vertical DPI, frame delay, loop count, and animation-only, frames-only or combined display. Without the plugin, DICOM files do not open.
Related terms
Document viewer SDK
A library you embed in your own application so it can display documents, as distinct from a hosted service you upload documents to. The SDK runs inside your process; the service runs inside somebody else's.
Air-gapped deployment
Running software in an environment with no network route to the internet, so every dependency it needs must already be inside the boundary.