Free Hip and Pelvis MRI Viewer for FAI, Labral Tears, and AVN
Most hip MRI exams arrive as two studies bundled together: a wide pelvis overview and a tighter, dedicated series of the joint that hurts. This viewer loads both, lets you flip between the coronal, sagittal, axial oblique, and radial images a hip protocol produces, and keeps every file on your own device the entire time. When you are ready, send the rendered frames for AI support on cam or pincer impingement, an acetabular labral tear, or a femoral head that looks like it has lost its blood supply.
Load Your Hip or Pelvis MRIWhat Is Actually Inside a Hip MRI Series
A hip protocol is rarely one sequence — it is a small stack of series, each built for a different question, and reading the folder names on the disc tells you almost as much as opening them. The large-field-of-view coronal covers both hips and the sacrum in one pass. It is a screening view: it is how a radiologist first compares the two femoral heads side by side and how patchy, band-like signal inside the bone marrow that signals avascular necrosis gets caught before it is ever localized to one side.
Once the symptomatic hip is identified, the second half of the exam narrows the field of view to that joint alone. A small-field coronal and a matching sagittal give higher in-plane resolution across the labrum, the joint capsule, and the gluteal and iliopsoas tendon insertions than the wide pelvis pass ever could. From there, an axial oblique sequence is angled along the long axis of the femoral neck specifically so the alpha angle — the measurement that flags cam-type impingement — can be drawn on a single, reproducible slice instead of guessed at across several.
The images that read strangest to a first-time viewer are the radial sequences: a fan of slices rotated around the femoral neck axis like spokes on a wheel, each one cutting perpendicular to the acetabular labrum at a different clock position. Stacked together and stepped through in order, they effectively unroll the labrum from front to back so a tear that only shows on one radial slice does not get missed by a single sagittal or coronal cut. Layered on top of all of this, fat-saturated fluid-sensitive sequences suppress the bright marrow fat signal so that bone marrow oedema, joint effusion, and — when contrast has been injected directly into the joint for an MR arthrogram — dye tracking into a labral tear all stand out instead of being lost in the surrounding fat.
What Radiologists Flag on a Hip and Pelvis MRI
- Cam and pincer femoroacetabular impingement measured against the alpha angle
- Acetabular labral tears mapped by clock position on the radial images
- Avascular necrosis staged from the large-field pelvis coronal
- Gluteal and iliopsoas tendinopathy or tears with trochanteric bursitis
- Femoral neck stress reaction or occult fracture missed on plain film
- Hip joint effusion, synovitis, and chondral surface loss
Browse Hip and Pelvis Conditions
How It Works
1
Upload DICOM Files
Drop your MRI ZIP file or individual .dcm files. Supports all standard DICOM transfer syntaxes including JPEG Lossless.
2
View in Browser
Navigate through slices with keyboard arrows or the slider. Adjust windowing, zoom, pan, and measure distances.
3
Get AI Analysis
4 AI models (GPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok) analyze independently. Claude synthesizes a unified report with findings and confidence levels.
Finding the Alpha Angle, the Labrum, and the Tendons in the Viewer
Start on the large-field pelvis coronal and scroll from front to back to compare the two femoral heads for symmetry — this is the fastest way to see whether one side looks flatter, brighter, or more irregular than the other. Switch to the dedicated hip series next and window for bone: the femoral head-neck junction should sharpen against the darker cortical rim. On the axial oblique slice through the femoral neck, the measurement tool can trace the angle a report calls the alpha angle by drawing a line along the neck axis and a second line to where the femoral head contour first leaves a best-fit circle.
Step through the radial stack one clock position at a time and re-window toward soft tissue to trace the labrum as a dark triangular rim; a tear shows as fluid signal splitting that rim or as an absent, blunted labrum at one or two clock positions. The gluteal tendons sit along the outer edge of the greater trochanter on the coronal and axial images, while the iliopsoas tendon runs along the front of the joint and is easiest to follow on the sagittal series. Comparing the pelvis overview against the dedicated hip series side by side is how a finding gets confirmed on one series and cross-checked on the other rather than judged from a single image.
For bone marrow oedema, switch to the fat-saturated fluid-sensitive series and lower the window width until the suppressed marrow reads uniformly dark — a bright patch that stands out against that dark background, whether it sits inside the femoral head, the neck, or the acetabular roof, is the signal a report is describing. If your exam includes an arthrogram, the same fat-saturated series is where injected contrast shows up brightest, and following it along the labral rim on the radial images is how a tear gets confirmed as contrast-positive rather than just suspected on morphology alone.
Why Some Hip Series Reconstruct in 3D and Others Do Not
Multiplanar reconstruction rebuilds axial, sagittal, and coronal views from a single acquired volume rather than from separately angled scans. The viewer can attempt this locally in your browser whenever a hip series has enough thin, evenly spaced slices to interpolate between — but a hip protocol mixes series that qualify with several that structurally cannot.
The radial labral stack is rotated slice by slice around the femoral neck axis rather than acquired as a single rectangular volume, so there is no consistent grid to resample into other planes — it stays a 2D fan by design. The large-field pelvis coronal is typically thick and gapped because it is meant for side-to-side screening, not fine reconstruction. A CT of the pelvis, by contrast, is usually acquired as near-isotropic voxels in one continuous pass, which is exactly why CT volume renders cleanly where these MRI series do not. AI analysis here remains a support tool for clinician review, not a diagnosis, and never replaces a radiologist's read.
Compare MPR, 3D DICOM viewing, and volume renderingWhat AI Support Can and Cannot Tell You About Your Hip
AI support can translate a hip report's vocabulary and point out what the rendered planes appear to show, but it holds no license and issues no diagnosis. Its job is to help you walk into your next appointment already understanding what a cam lesion, an anterosuperior labral tear, or a stage-two avascular necrosis finding actually means, so the conversation with your orthopedic surgeon starts from understanding instead of confusion.
Read the AI MRI explanation guideWhy Use Our Free MRI Viewer
Browser-Based Viewing
Raw MRI files stay on your device for DICOM parsing, rendering, and viewing. If you request AI analysis, the app uses rendered images and minimal context.
No Installation Required
Works in any modern browser — Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge. No plugins, no Java, no desktop software to download.
AI-Powered Analysis
Four independent AI models can explain rendered MRI images. Each model provides its own findings, then Claude synthesizes a consensus report.
Advanced Viewing Tools
Multi-plane navigation, windowing presets (bone, soft tissue, brain), zoom up to 4x, pan, and distance measurement in millimeters.
All MRI Sequences Supported
T1, T2, PD, STIR, FLAIR, gradient echo, and fat-suppressed sequences. Sagittal, coronal, and axial planes.
Downloadable PDF Report
Generate a professional report with structured findings, severity grading, model agreement, and recommendations for your physician.
Supported MRI Formats
DICOM (.dcm) — individual slice files
ZIP archives — containing DICOM series folders
JPEG Lossless (1.2.840.10008.1.2.4.70) transfer syntax
Explicit VR Little Endian, Implicit VR Little Endian
8-bit, 12-bit, and 16-bit pixel depth
MONOCHROME1 and MONOCHROME2 photometric interpretation
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the hip and pelvis MRI viewer cost anything to use?
No. Loading and stepping through pelvis and dedicated hip series in your browser is free with no scan limit. AI support on a specific finding is credit-based, currently $10 per analysis session.
What is the alpha angle, and can the viewer measure it for me?
The alpha angle quantifies how much the femoral head-neck junction deviates from round on the axial oblique slice cut along the femoral neck; a larger angle points toward cam-type impingement. The viewer's angle tool lets you draw and read that measurement directly on the loaded slice.
Why does my hip MRI include radial images instead of just standard planes?
Radial sequences rotate around the femoral neck axis so each slice cuts perpendicular to the labrum at a different clock position. That fan-shaped stack unrolls the whole labral rim, which a fixed sagittal or coronal cut alone cannot do without missing a tear on the wrong angle.
Can this viewer build a 3D model of my hip from the MRI?
Only when the underlying series supports it. The dedicated hip series can sometimes reconstruct into other planes if it was acquired with enough thin, evenly spaced slices; the radial labral stack and the thick large-field pelvis coronal cannot, because neither is acquired as a resamplable volume.
Do my raw hip DICOM files ever leave my device?
No. Parsing and rendering happen locally in your browser through JavaScript and WebAssembly. Only the rendered images you choose to submit for AI support are sent onward, never the original DICOM files.
What is an MR arthrogram, and does the viewer support it?
An MR arthrogram injects contrast directly into the hip joint before scanning so it can track into a labral tear on fat-saturated sequences, making small tears easier to see than on a non-contrast study. The viewer opens arthrogram series exactly like any other DICOM series in the exam.
How reliable is the AI read on impingement and labral tears?
Four independent models review the rendered planes and each reports its own confidence, with the synthesis noting where they agree or diverge on findings like cam impingement, labral tearing, or avascular necrosis staging. Treat it as a second-opinion aid, not a substitute for a radiologist's formal report.
See all supported file formats → for the complete list.
Hip Imaging Focus
On Analyze My Hip, the viewer helps you inspect hip scans and connect image findings with common pain, impingement, arthritis, and labral injury questions.
Common hip findings
Review hip labral tears, femoroacetabular impingement, arthritis, avascular necrosis, bursitis, stress fracture, gluteal tendon findings, MRI soft-tissue detail, and CT or X-ray bone detail.
Prepare for hip review
Use the hip condition pages to understand whether a report is describing X-ray joint space narrowing, CT fracture or impingement morphology, MRI labrum and tendon findings, or mixed hip pain patterns.