In this section, we describe how the pict widget is incorporated
in VISU, a user-friendly volume visualization extension of
wish. In addition to the low-level widget commands, we provide a set
of default scripts and high-level commands which make the life of the
average user easier. In order to remove any learning curve for LLNL
users, the syntax of these commands reproduces that of VIEW, a general
signal processing package used in our group. For example, the
following commands will read the first slice of volume ``hand'',
display the image, and then display the tenth slice.
% disp f
% rdslice f 10
% rdfile hand_0.sdt f
The simplicity of these commands enables the user to write his/her own set of macros. In addition to the command line, VISU also provides a graphical interface to most of the high-level commands. In order to reduce the GUI design, we chose to provide only one Control Panel (see Figure 3) and a one-to-one mapping between images and windows. At a given time, one image is considered ``active''. An image becomes active when the user clicks on it, and its window title is changed. The mouse location and pixel values displayed in the Control Panel correspond to those of the active window. Similarly, moving the slice scale will result in another slice being displayed; the dynamic range of the images can be typed in two entry boxes.
The Palette Menu (Figure 4) lets the user change the colors with the mouse. Four scales can be moved in order to choose the low and high thresholds. The pixels whose values are between the low and high threshold appear white, and the rest appear black. As soon as the scale is changed, the look-up table is updated. Visualizing the actual values of the thresholds instead of normalized values proved very helpful. For example, in our CT applications, the user can see where the attenuation value exceeds a threshold. Predefined look-up tables can be loaded by clicking on one of the radiobuttons. A color tool makes it possible to stretch the colormap in a non-linear way. The graphical interface allows the user to change the intensity and each of the RGB channels independently to create their own look-up table.
In the Overlays Menu (Figure 5), the active mask can be chosen and overlaid onto the active image. The user can choose how to combine the overlays by setting the overlay Graphic Context with the mouse. For example, the intersection of two binary masks can be seen and saved into a new image. We also provide a graphical interface to our segmentation routines.
The GUI can be customized within minutes without recompiling any code. For example, displaying several images side-by-side could be done by packing them in the same canvas, instead of different windows. This flexibility enables us to design the best GUI and to take into account the requirement of a specific imaging application. In most cases, the user will be able to configure the GUI himself.
Releasing the source code on the
Internet
helped test VISU on
various platforms and operating systems we did not have access to. The
configure tool generates Makefiles automatically. While it is
still dependent on Xlib, VISU can be ported to Windows and Mac-OS
without too much effort, to become a machine-independent visualization
software. About 500 anonymous ftps were logged on our server. Let us
remark that this figure may appear small, but most of the VISU users
have very specific needs and would probably not use Tcl/Tk at all if
this gray-scale image widget did not exist.