DICOM Viewer MCP

What it does

DICOM Viewer MCP is a prototype MCP App that lets you load and navigate medical imaging studies (.dcm files) directly within Claude Desktop. It processes DICOM files server-side using dicom-parser and sharp, converts pixel data to PNG with proper window/level handling, and serves the result as an interactive HTML resource — bypassing Content Security Policy restrictions entirely.

Key features

• In-interface DICOM rendering — no external viewer needed; images appear inside Claude Desktop
• Series navigation — scroll wheel, slider, previous/next buttons, and Home/End keyboard shortcuts to move through slices
• Pan and zoom — Ctrl+scroll to zoom, click-and-drag to pan, reset button to restore default view
• Server-side processing — handles window/level, rescale slope/intercept, MONOCHROME1/2, 8-bit and 16-bit pixel data
• Automatic slice sorting — orders by Instance Number or Slice Location

Installation

Clone the repository and build locally, then register it in your Claude Desktop config.

git clone https://github.com/ThalesMMS/dicom-viewer-mcp-prototype.git
cd dicom-viewer-mcp-prototype
npm install
npm run build

Claude Desktop: Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dicom-viewer": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/dicom-viewer-mcp-prototype/dist/index.js", "--stdio"]
    }
  }
}

Place .dcm files in the ./dicom/ folder, restart Claude Desktop, then ask Claude to "show me a DICOM study".

Supported hosts

• Claude Desktop (stdio transport)

Note: Currently supports uncompressed DICOM only (Explicit/Implicit VR Little Endian). JPEG/JPEG2000 compressed files are not yet supported.