DICOM Test Tool for macOS

A free, native Mac app for testing and troubleshooting DICOM connections
C-ECHO · C-STORE · C-FIND / C-MOVE · Modality Worklist · Storage SCP · Watchdog · Tag viewer

⬇️ Download the latest version (DMG) · Website · 🇩🇪 Deutsche Version

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What is it?

DICOM Test Tool for macOS is a free, open-source app for PACS administrators, biomedical and medical IT engineers, and IT support staff. Use it to check quickly whether PACS, RIS, modalities and workstations can talk to each other – and to find out why they can't.

It is written natively in Swift and SwiftUI and has its own DICOM networking implementation with no third-party libraries.

Warning

For IT and connection testing only – not for diagnostic use. This software is not a medical device under Regulation (EU) 2017/745 (MDR) or comparable regulations. It must not be used for diagnosis, reporting, treatment planning or any other clinical decision. The image display only lets you check transferred data from a technical point of view.

Features

Tool	What it does
🖧 Nodes & settings	Manage remote nodes (AE title, host, port); your own calling AE title and timeout
📡 Echo (Verification)	C-ECHO “DICOM ping” with timings (association, echo, total) and repeat count
📤 Store	C-STORE files and folders via drag & drop; built-in test image generator (no real patient data); automatic Implicit ↔ Explicit VR conversion
🔍 Query / Retrieve	C-FIND (Study / Patient Root) at patient, study, series and image level; double-click to drill down; C-MOVE to any destination
📋 Modality Worklist	MWL query against your RIS – just like a modality would send it
📥 Storage SCP	Turns your Mac into a DICOM receiver; files are sorted by patient ID; ideal as a C-MOVE destination
❤️ Watchdog	Keeps monitoring nodes with C-ECHO and sends a macOS notification on failure and recovery
🖼️ Viewer / tag dump	All tags including sequences, with filter; image display with windowing, multi-frame, JPEG / JPEG 2000, PNG export

Also included:

• 📍 Menu bar icon – start and stop the SCP and Watchdog, send an echo, open any tool, even over full-screen apps
• 📝 Protocol log of every step, including presentation context negotiation, exportable as TXT
• 📅 Date fields with a calendar – or type DDMMYYYY / DD.MM.YYYY
• 🎓 Guided tour through all tools
• 🎨 Colour schemes: standard (macOS) or clinical dark (black / orange)
• 🔄 Automatic updates via GitHub Releases, with release notes plus checksum and signature checks
• 🚀 Launch at login, auto-start of the SCP and Watchdog, log files (kept 30 days)

The user interface is currently in German.

Installation

1. Download DICOM-Test-Tool.dmg from Releases.
2. Open the DMG and drag DICOM Test Tool onto the Applications folder (“Programme”).
3. Eject the disk image and start the app from Applications or Spotlight.

Important

First launch: macOS blocks the app because it is not notarised by Apple. To allow it once:

1. Close the message with Done.
2. Open System Settings › Privacy & Security.
3. Scroll down to “DICOM Test Tool” was blocked and click Open Anyway, then confirm.

After that the app starts normally, including after in-app updates.

Requirements: macOS 14 Sonoma or later, Apple Silicon or Intel.

🪟 Windows version

Since version 1.4 there is DICOM Test Tool for Windows with the same tools (echo, store, query/retrieve, worklist, storage SCP, watchdog, viewer), a notification-area icon, Windows notifications and automatic updates. The viewer additionally decodes JPEG Lossless, JPEG-LS and RLE. The user interface is in German.

1. Download DICOM-Test-Tool-win-Setup.exe from Releases and run it – no administrator rights needed.
2. On first launch Windows SmartScreen shows “Windows protected your PC” because the installer is not signed: click More info › Run anyway.
3. For the storage SCP, Windows Firewall asks on first start – allow Private networks (requires administrator rights). The SCP page can also copy a matching netsh command.

Without installation (portable): download DICOM-Test-Tool-win-portable.exe and run it directly, e.g. from a USB stick. Limitations: no automatic updates; settings and logs are still stored under %APPDATA% / %LOCALAPPDATA%\DICOM Test Tool; “start at sign-in” remembers the current path of the EXE.

Requirements: Windows 10 (22H2) or Windows 11, 64-bit (x64).

Updates

The app checks for new versions once a day. When one is available, a window shows what's new, with an Install and Restart button. You can also check manually under Über › Updates, or from the menu bar icon. You can choose between stable releases and pre-releases.

Privacy

• No telemetry, no analytics, no ads, no account. The app sends nothing to the developer.
• Network connections go only to the DICOM nodes you configure, and to GitHub (api.github.com, github.com) for the update check. GitHub sees your IP address for these requests; GitHub's privacy statement applies. You can turn off the automatic update check.
• Local storage only: settings live in macOS user defaults, logs in ~/Library/Application Support/DICOM Test Tool (kept 30 days), and received DICOM files only in the folder you choose.
• Patient data: DICOM objects, logs and the protocol can contain patient data. Handle them according to your organisation's policies, and remove patient data before sharing logs or opening an issue.

Intended use & legal notes

• Intended use: setting up, testing and troubleshooting DICOM network connections, by IT staff, PACS administrators and biomedical engineers.
• Not a medical device, not for diagnostic use – see the warning above.
• No certification: this software is not certified or validated by NEMA or any other body, and makes no claim of full DICOM conformance. No DICOM Conformance Statement is provided.
• Trademarks: DICOM® is the registered trademark of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) for its standards publications relating to digital communications of medical information. It is used here only descriptively; this project is not affiliated with or endorsed by NEMA. macOS is a trademark of Apple Inc. Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
• Private project: a private, non-commercial open-source project, provided under the MIT License without any warranty.

Known limitations

• No DICOM Print, no C-GET, no TLS.
• Viewer: JPEG Lossless, JPEG-LS and RLE are not decoded (tags are still shown).
• Deflated and Explicit VR Big Endian files cannot be read (receiving and forwarding them works).

Bugs and feature requests

Please open an issue. An exported protocol (Protokoll › Exportieren …) helps most – please remove patient data first.

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For developers

Build from source

Requires Xcode 15 or later.

./build-app.sh

Output in dist/: DICOM Test Tool.app, DICOM-Test-Tool.dmg (drag & drop installer), DICOM-Test-Tool.zip plus .sha256 (used by the updater) and the command-line tool dicomcli. On the first build, macOS may ask whether Terminal may control Finder. This is needed to lay out the DMG window.

Publishing a release

1. Bump VERSION and add a ## <version> section to CHANGELOG.md.
2. Run ./release.sh. It builds the app and creates the DMG, ZIP, .sha256 and dist/RELEASE_NOTES.md.
3. ./release.sh builds macOS and Windows and prints the gh release create command with all files. Both platforms always ship in the same release with the same version number. Do not rename the files and never add another .zip (older Mac versions take the first ZIP with “dicom” in its name).

The app queries https://api.github.com/repos/<owner>/<repo>/releases/latest. The default is AppInfo.defaultRepository. For testing without GitHub, set DICOMTESTTOOL_UPDATE_API=http://127.0.0.1:8765 to point it at a local mock server.

Command line (dicomcli)

dicomcli echo  <host> <port> <calledAE>
dicomcli store <host> <port> <calledAE> <file|folder>...
dicomcli find  <host> <port> <calledAE> [patientname]
dicomcli mwl   <host> <port> <calledAE> [patientname]
dicomcli move  <host> <port> <calledAE> <destinationAE> <studyUID>
dicomcli scp   <port> <aeTitle> <folder>
dicomcli testimage <folder> [count]
dicomcli dump  <file>
dicomcli png   <file> <output.png>

The calling AE title is set with the environment variable DICOM_AET (default: DICOMCLI).

Project layout

Folder	Contents
Sources/DicomCore	DICOM implementation: PDUs, association, DIMSE, data sets, Part 10 files, image rendering
Sources/DICOMTestTool	SwiftUI app
Sources/dicomcli	Command-line tool
windows	Windows version (.NET 10, Avalonia, fo-dicom) – see windows/README.md
Scripts	Icon generator, DMG background and DMG builder
docs	Project website (GitHub Pages)

License

MIT © 2026 Martin Senft