spinsight 1.3.0

MR image simulator for teaching purposes

SpinSight MRI simulator

SpinSight is an MRI simulator written in Python and created for educational puposes. It jointly visualizes the imaging parameters, the MRI pulse sequence, the k-space data matrix, and the MR image. These are updated in near real-time when the user changes parameters. The simulator is run as a web browser dashboard. The data is simulated from computational 2D phantoms in vector graphics format (SVG).

Running the Simulator

Install using pip:

pip install spinsight

Then run as a command line tool

spinsight

This serves SpinSight on the local host, so that the simulator can be run by navigating to localhost in the web browser. The same command line tool can be used to deploy the simulator on a local network, or on a web server (run spinsight -h for help). Be aware that several minutes are required upon loading a phantom for the first time.

Phantom construction

To create a new phantom, add a directory with the phantom name under spinsight/phantoms. This directory shall contain specifications in a .toml file with the same name (see brain.toml for reference). The specified .svg file must meet the following specifications:

• All paths must be closed
• All paths must have a fill color matching a hexcolor defined in the TISSUES dict in constants.py (this defines the tissue).
• Only polygons are supported (not Bézier curves etc)

Alternatively a second .toml file can be specified with a list of shapes (see Shepp-Logan_shapes.toml for reference).

Dependencies

See pyproject.toml under heading [tool.poetry.dependencies].

How to cite

If you use this software in your research, please cite:

Berglund J, Jain K, Sousa JM, Hedman K, Fahlström M. “SpinSight – An educational open-source MRI simulator with joint visualization of pulse sequence, k-space, and MR image. In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, Honolulu 2025, pp. 1968.

License

SpinSight is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. See LICENSE.md.

Contact Information

Johan Berglund, Ph.D.
Uppsala University Hospital,
Uppsala, Sweden
[e-mail]

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Copyright © 2021–2026 Johan Berglund.