How to Copy an MRI or CT CD to Your Computer or a USB Stick

Copy the disc by hand

1. Insert the disc and open it in File Explorer (Windows) or Finder (Mac).
2. Make a new folder on your computer or USB stick, for example CT chest 2026-10.
3. Select everything on the disc (Ctrl+A on Windows, Command+A on a Mac) and drag it into the new folder. Wait until the copy finishes; a CT can be hundreds of files.
4. Open the new folder with a DICOM viewer to check the copy.

Copy the disc as it is: the DICOMDIR index refers to the files by their place in the folders, so moving or renaming files breaks it.

Copy it with SlideScope

When you open a disc in SlideScope, it offers Copy this scan to your computer. The whole disc is copied, with progress and a Cancel button, into Documents › SlideScope Scans, in a folder named after the disc and the date, and the copy is what opens from then on. If the disc is taken out halfway, nothing half-copied is left behind.

Ask the hospital for a USB stick or download

Many imaging departments can put a scan on a USB stick or make it available in the patient portal. A download usually arrives as a ZIP file: unzip it, then open the folder with a DICOM viewer.

If the copy will not open

• Some files are missing: copy the whole disc again, not just the DICOM folder or a few files.
• Files were renamed or moved: copy again without changing anything.
• A ZIP was not unzipped: unzip it first; viewers cannot look inside a ZIP.
• The disc itself is damaged: the hospital can make a new one.

Keep the copy private

The files carry your name, date of birth and the hospital’s details. Keep the copy somewhere private, and think before uploading it anywhere. SlideScope keeps medical scans on your computer: no cloud saving, no share links, no AI.

SlideScope for CT, MRI and X-ray discs: the facts

• SlideScope opens the DICOM files on a hospital CD, DVD or USB stick on Windows 10/11 and macOS 14 or later.
• Home has a button, “Got a scan on a CD or USB? Open it”, that finds the disc by its DICOMDIR index, whatever drive letter it got.
• Opening the disc’s DICOMDIR file opens the whole disc; each CT or MRI series is listed once, by name and number of images.
• All slices of a CT or MRI series open as one scrollable stack, in the order the scanner took them, with the real distance between slices.
• CT scans can be shown in the soft tissue, lung, bone and brain windows, or the windows the scanner saved.
• Distances are measured in millimetres.
• A disc can be copied to the computer with “Copy this scan to your computer”, into a SlideScope Scans folder in Documents.
• Medical scans stay on the computer: SlideScope does not send them to AI, save them to the cloud or share them by link.
• SlideScope is for viewing, not diagnosis. It does not interpret scans; your doctor or the radiologist’s report explains what a scan shows.

Questions people ask