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Davide Punzo edited this page Jun 10, 2016 · 239 revisions

Welcome to the SlicerAstro wiki!

Intro: SlicerAstro, an Astronomy (HI) extension for 3-D Slicer

Upcoming HI (neutral Hydrogen) surveys will deliver large datasets, and automated processing using the full 3-D information (two positional dimensions and one spectral dimension) to find and characterize HI objects is imperative. In this context, visualization is an essential tool for enabling qualitative and quantitative human control on an automated source finding and analysis pipeline. Visual Analytics, the combination of automated data processing and human reasoning, creativity and intuition, supported by interactive visualization, enables flexible and fast interaction with the 3-D data, helping the astronomer to deal with the analysis of complex sources. 3-D visualization, coupled to modeling, provides additional capabilities helping the discovery and analysis of subtle structures in the 3-D domain.

Objective: general description

* 1) proper visualization of astronomical data cubes: using data astronomical data formats, such as FITS, and astronomical world coordinates system (WCS); * 2) generation of Histogram, flux density profiles, moment maps and position-velocity diagrams linked with the 3-D view; * 3) enabling interactive smoothing in all three dimensions; * 4) interactive HI data modeling coupled to visualization; * 5) introduction of the SAMP protocol to enable interoperability with Topcat, and other VO tools and catalogs.

Progress (1):

* FITS reader and AstroVolume done; * WCS included in AstroVolume. * Added AstroLabelMapVolume (WCS compatible). * Generalization of qSlicerUnits. * Slicer dataProbe moduile overrided with AstroDataProbe one. * First desing of the AstroVolume interface done. * Added WCS axis in the 2-D views. * Customization of 2-D and 3-D Views. * Done!

Progress (3):

* module created; * interface designed; * Logic methods implemented on CPU (OpenMP); * Logic methods implemented on GPU (OpenGL); * Done!

General NOTE

* at the moment the SlicerAstro is not aware of the CELLSCAL keyword * at the moment datacubes NAXIS>3 not supported (NAXIS=4 and NAXIS4=1 -> NAXIS=3) * at the moment SlicerAstro doesn't "align" label and foreground volume to the background. This means that, at the moment, the users should take care to load datacubes with same gridding and and same WCS.

Get SlicerAstro

SlicerAstro is an official 3-DSlicer extension. Please, download 3-DSlicer:

http://download.slicer.org/

donwload SlicerAstro using the 3-DSlicer extension manager tool (available for Linux and MAC): http://wiki.slicer.org/slicerWiki/index.php/Documentation/Nightly/SlicerApplication/ExtensionsManager

SlcierAstro not available in the ExtesionManager at the moment (01/June/2016). Please recheck in one week.

After the installation, please configure the settings (to open the popup interface press ctrl+2) with the following instruction:

  • Volume Rendering: setup if the default rendering pipeline runs on CPU or GPU.
  • Modules: skip loading CLI modules as shown in figure: restart.

P.S. some medical modules will be still present in the interface. While later on this procedure may be implemented as an automatic routine (see http://na-mic.org/Mantis/view.php?id=2920#c13958); at the moment, they may be removed in the same setting section by unclicking all the remaining modules which are not included in the following list: Annotations, AstroDataProbe, AstroDataSample, AstroVolume, Cameras, Charting, Colors, Compare Volumes, Data, DataProbe, DataStore, DoubleArrays, Event Broker, Markups, Models, Reformat, Scene Views, Smooth Volume, Subject Hierarchy, Tables, Transforms, Volume Rendering, Volumes, Welcome to Slicer, Welcome to SlicerAstro

For general information about 3-DSlicer and tutorials we refer to

The interface

For information about the GUI and the navigation, we refer to the Slicer documentation:

Markups and crosshair are also very useful tools. Please, check the following links:

Welcome module

The SlicerAstro's Modules

Check https://www.slicer.org/slicerWiki/index.php/Documentation/Nightly/Extensions/SlicerAstro

Python interactor

It is a very useful util to access run-time the Slicer classes (e.g. the data of the fits file are stored in the AstroVolume class). Python script can also be runned typing on termianl Slicer --python ...

See:

Quick Links: Home • Download • SlicerAstro Roadmap • Tutorial • 3DSlicer User Manual • SlicerAstro User Manual • Python Interactor • Developer Manual

Contents

User Documentation

Utility

Developer Documentation

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