Slice:Drop - Collaborative Medical Imaging in the Browser

Traditionally, medical image data is visualized and processed on highly specialized software and workstations. Although such software is quite feature-rich, it is often OS-specific and overly complex, requiring a steep learning curve and large time investment. Significantly, there is no concept of real-time image sharing or collaboration in this field. Clinical or research findings from visualizations are described completely out-of-band, and collaborators need to indepedently render and interact with the image data to discover similar findings.

Slice:Drop is a set of technologies built on open-source components that allows for simple, intuitive rendering of a wide range of medical-image formats directly in the browser. Using existing and freely available middleware, it allows real-time sharing of linked image-session data among any number of browsers. Interacting with visuals on one device or browser updates the identical visualization on any other linked browser. Any WebGL-browser can interact with the data in real time, and all linked browsers are updated accordingly. The technology is built on the open-source MIT-licensed JavaScript XTK library for Scientific WebGL and incorporated in the web site slicedrop.com. Sharing of image data is enabled using the DropBox API.

This Real-Time Live! demonstration shows real-time sharing and interaction with medical data in a single shared session among linked laptops, workstations, smartphones, and tablets. This conceptually simple technology can enable new classes of medical imaging, reduce the obstacles to sharing data, and result in simpler, easier collaboration on clinical and research findings.