Internet Image Viewer (iiV)

Joel T Lee¹ , Kristin R Munch¹ , John V Carlis² and José V Pardo¹

¹Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, VA Medical Center, Minneapolis, MN 55417, USA

²Computer Science Department, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA

author email corresponding author email

BMC Medical Imaging 2008, 8:10doi:10.1186/1471-2342-8-10


Published:	29 May 2008

Abstract

Background

Visualizing 3-dimensional (3-D) datasets is an important part of modern neuroimaging research. Many tools address this problem; however, they often fail to address specific needs and flexibility, such as the ability to work with different data formats, to control how and what data are displayed, to interact with values, and to undo mistakes.

Results

iiV, an interactive software program for displaying 3-D brain images, is described. This tool was programmed to solve basic problems in 3-D data visualization. It is written in Java so it is extensible, is platform independent, and can display images within web pages.

iiV displays 3-D images as 2-dimensional (2-D) slices with each slice being an independent object with independent features such as location, zoom, colors, labels, etc. Feature manipulation becomes easier by having a full set of editing capabilities including the following: undo or redo changes; drag, copy, delete and paste objects; and save objects with their features to a file for future editing. It can read multiple standard positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) file formats like ECAT, ECAT7, ANALYZE, NIfTI-1 and DICOM. We present sample applications to illustrate some of the features and capabilities.

Conclusion

iiV is an image display tool with many useful features. It is highly extensible, platform independent, and web-compatible. This report summarizes its features and applications, while illustrating iiV's usefulness to the biomedical imaging community.