3D Slicer 4.10.1 Improves Segmentation Effects and Adds Video Management Infrastructure

On behalf of the 3D Slicer development community, we are pleased to announce that version 4.10.1 is now available for download.  This patch release introduces ~150 feature enhancements and bug fixes. It includes a new extension, as well as more than 10 new-and-improved core modules.

To learn about the ~500 feature enhancements and bug fixes already introduced in version 4.10, consider reading our previous post, “3D Slicer 4.10 gets Released with Improved Rendering Performances and New Virtual Reality Support.”

3D Slicer is made possible through contributions from an international community of scientists from a multitude of fields, including engineering and biomedicine. The authors of this blog are part of the Kitware team that participated in the wider community that made this release.

Here are some release highlights.

Improvements and fixes have been implemented in Data and related modules. More specifically, the following were added:

• a jump slices option to the segment visibility menu in the Data module
• a color column and improved transform column in subject hierarchy
• the ability to toggle visibility for multi-select in the Data module

Additional improvements include these:

• a folder can override branch color, which is an important step toward making subject hierarchy usable as model hierarchy.
• a visibility context menu action called “Apply color to branch” now allows you to override the color of the model nodes in the folder.

Many improvements and fixes have also been implemented in Segment Editor and related modules. They result in the following:

• allow you to use a mask with grow from seeds effect
• make segmentation geometry update more robust
• improve automatic oversampling calculation
• allow segmentation without the selection of a master volume
• add a “Show 3D” option for segmentation auto-complete results preview

Built-in web browser improvements allow you to directly load data from standard websites, which may have logins and custom download forms. Improvements also enable the evaluation of webpage JavaScript code from C++ or Python or the evaluation of Slicer Python from the page’s JavaScript.

Furthermore, new infrastructure has been added for the management of compressed video frames. Extensions can implement and register their own video compression codecs for decoding and encoding frames. The SlicerIGSIO extension provides an example of codec registration with VP9, as well as support for both compressed video recording/replay and MKV loading/saving.

Please visit the 3D Slicer forum for a complete list of improvements and fixes.

We are one of the lead maintainers of 3D Slicer and other software solutions such as the Insight Toolkit (ITK), the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) and CMake. To support these solutions, we offer consulting services. Contact us at kitware@kitware.com to learn how we can help integrate the software into your research, processes and products.