Permanent File Association With Program

I had some X-rays and an MRI done and they gave me the images for them on a CD. The images are in a format used by the diagnostic imaging industry, DICOM. I downloaded a free DICOM viewer to view the images and it works very well but if I click on the file directly in the folder I get the pop-up window asking what program I want to use to open the file every time, even though I have opened several of the images using the viewer. In previous versions of Windows it seems like there was a way to permanently associate a particular file type with a program so when one would double click on any file of that type it would always open with that program by default. Can't figure out how to do it in Windows 8.
TIA
J.

Link (for XP, but should work for Win8 also):

http://www.ehow.com/how_6900577_set-...indows-xp.html

The option is not there:
http://content.screencast.com/users/...2013-15.03.jpg

I don't have a Win8 box in front of me, but this is what I do in Win7.

When you right-click on the file, you should see "Open with > Choose default program..."
Choose a program (browse to the .exe if necessary)
Make sure "Always use the selected program..." is checked, then click OK

In Windows 8 I see this:
http://content.screencast.com/users/...2013-16.30.jpg
When you scroll down to the bottom it has a link to choose another app not on the list. When you click on that it takes you to Windows Explorer.

Can you then use Windows Explorer to navigate to the location where your viewer application .exe file is located, and then select that file?

I'm thinking maybe the option to select a default program to open these files is not there because there is no file extension? That is it does not end with .jpg or .bmp so Windows does not recognize them in that way?

Quote:

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Can you then use Windows Explorer to navigate to the location where your viewer application .exe file is located, and then select that file?

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Yes, you can. But there is no option to make it a default.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jseidel

I'm thinking maybe the option to select a default program to open these files is not there because there is no file extension? That is it does not end with .jpg or .bmp so Windows does not recognize them in that way?

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That is probably it. I thought you had just hidden file extensions, until I took a closer look. You need the file extension in order to set a file association.