dash_slicer

A volume slicer for Dash

Create slice views along a given dimension, and allows multiple such views to be linked, to help with navigation. Supports anisotropic data, mask overlays, and more.

Status

This work is marked as alpha - some essential features are still in development, and some parts of the API may change in future releases.

Installation

$ pip install dash-slicer

Dash-slicer depends on Python 3.6+ plus some dependencies.

Usage example

import dash
from dash import html
from dash_slicer import VolumeSlicer
import imageio

app = dash.Dash(__name__, update_title=None)

vol = imageio.volread("imageio:stent.npz")
slicer = VolumeSlicer(app, vol)

app.layout = html.Div([slicer.graph, slicer.slider, *slicer.stores])

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run_server(debug=True, dev_tools_props_check=False)

See the guide for more examples and explanations. A complete app that uses dash-slicer is dash-vocid-xray (source).

License

This code is distributed under the MIT license.

Developers

• Make sure that you have Python with the appropriate dependencies installed, e.g. via venv.

• Run pip install -e . to do an in-place install of the package.

• Run the examples using e.g. python examples/all_features.py

• Use black . to autoformat.

• Use flake8 . to lint.

• Use pytest . to run the tests.

• Use python update_docs_in_readme.py to update the readme when needed.

On every PR, an app with the same name as your branch is deployed to the Dash playground instance so that you can change whether your changes did not break the package.

Release procedure:

• Bump version in __init__.py (and commit this change).
• Run git tag v?.? && git push origin v?.?
• On GH, turn that tag into a release and write release notes.
• Clear the dist dir.
• Run python setup.py sdist bdist_wheel
• Run twine upload dist/*
• Bump version of dash-slicer in dash-docs.

Reference

The VolumeSlicer class

class VolumeSlicer(app, volume, *, spacing=None, origin=None, axis=0, reverse_y=True, clim=None, scene_id=None, color=None, thumbnail=True)

A slicer object to show 3D image data in Dash. Upon instantiation one can provide the following parameters:

• app (dash.Dash): the Dash application instance.
• volume (ndarray): the 3D numpy array to slice through. The dimensions are assumed to be in zyx order. If this is not the case, you can use np.swapaxes to make it so.
• spacing (tuple of float): the distance between voxels for each dimension (zyx). The spacing and origin are applied to make the slice drawn in "scene space" rather than "voxel space".
• origin (tuple of float): the offset for each dimension (zyx).
• axis (int): the dimension to slice in. Default 0.
• reverse_y (bool): whether to reverse the y-axis, so that the origin of the slice is in the top-left, rather than bottom-left. Default True. Note: setting this to False affects performance, see #12. This has been fixed, but the fix has not yet been released with Dash.
• clim (tuple of float): the (initial) contrast limits. Default the min and max of the volume.
• scene_id (str): the scene that this slicer is part of. Slicers that have the same scene-id show each-other's positions with line indicators. By default this is derived from id(volume).
• color (str): the color for this slicer. By default the color is a shade of blue, orange, or green, depending on the axis. Set to empty string to prevent drawing indicators for this slicer.
• thumbnail (int or bool): the preferred size of low-resolution data to be uploaded to the client. If False, the full-resolution data are uploaded client-side. If True (default), a default value of 32 is used.

Note that this is not a Dash Component. The components that make up the slicer (and which must be present in the layout) are: slicer.graph, slicer.slider, and slicer.stores.

method VolumeSlicer.create_overlay_data(mask, color=None)

Given a 3D mask array, create an object that can be used as output for slicer.overlay_data. Set mask to None to clear the mask. The color can be a hex color or an rgb/rgba tuple. Alternatively, color can be a list of such colors, defining a colormap.

property VolumeSlicer.axis (int): The axis to slice.

property VolumeSlicer.clim: A dcc.Store to be used as Output, representing the contrast limits as a 2-element tuple. This value should probably not be changed too often (e.g. on slider drag) because the thumbnail data is recreated on each change.

property VolumeSlicer.extra_traces: A dcc.Store to be used as an Output to define additional traces to be shown in this slicer. The data must be a list of dictionaries, with each dict representing a raw trace object.

property VolumeSlicer.graph: The dcc.Graph for this slicer. Use graph.figure to access the Plotly Figure object.

property VolumeSlicer.nslices (int): The number of slices for this slicer.

property VolumeSlicer.overlay_data: A dcc.Store to be used an Output for the overlay data. The form of this data is considered an implementation detail; users are expected to use create_overlay_data to create it.

property VolumeSlicer.scene_id (str): The id of the "virtual scene" for this slicer. Slicers that have the same scene_id show each-other's positions.

property VolumeSlicer.slider: The dcc.Slider to change the index for this slicer. If you don't want to use the slider, wrap it in a div with style display: none.

property VolumeSlicer.state: A dcc.Store representing the current state of the slicer (present in slicer.stores). This store is intended for use as State or Input. Its data is a dict with the fields:

• "index": the integer slice index.
• "index_changed": a bool indicating whether the index changed since last time.
• "xrange": the view range (2 floats) in the x-dimension (2D).
• "yrange": the view range (2 floats) in the y-dimension (2D).
• "zpos": the float position aling the axis, in scene coordinates.
• "axis": the axis (int) for this slicer.
• "color": the color (str) for this slicer.

The id of the store is a dictionary so it can be used in a pattern matching Input. Its field are: context, scene, name. Where scene is the scene_id and name is "state".

property VolumeSlicer.stores: A list of dcc.Store objects that the slicer needs to work. These must be added to the app layout. Note that public stores like state and extra_traces are also present in this list.

Reacting to slicer state

It is possible to get notified of updates to slicer position and view ranges. To get this for all slicers with a specific scene_id, create a pattern matching input like this:

Input({"scene": scene_id, "context": ALL, "name": "state"})

See the state property for details.

Setting slicer positions

To programatically set the position of the slicer, create a dcc.Store with a dictionary-id that has the following fields:

• 'context': a unique name for this store.
• 'scene': the scene_id of the slicer objects to set the position for.
• 'name': 'setpos'

The value in the store must be an 3-element tuple (x, y, z) in scene coordinates. To apply the position for one dimension only, use e.g (None, None, x).

Performance tips

There tends to be a lot of interaction in an application that contains slicer objects. To realize a smooth user experience, performance matters. Here are some tips to help with that:

• Most importantly, when running the server in debug mode, consider setting dev_tools_props_check=False.
• Also consider creating the Dash application with update_title=None.
• Setting reverse_y to False negatively affects performance. This will be fixed in a future version of Plotly/Dash.
• For a smooth experience, avoid triggering unnecessary figure updates.
• When adding a callback that uses the slicer position, use the (rate limited) state store rather than the slider value.