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BlueLight: An Open Source DICOM Viewer Using Low-Cost Computation Algorithm Implemented with JavaScript Using Advanced Medical Imaging Visualization

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Abstract

Recently, WebGL has been widely used in numerous web-based medical image viewers to present advanced imaging visualization. However, in the scenario of medical imaging, there are many challenges of computation time and memory consumption that limit the use of advanced image renderings, such as volume rendering and multiplanar reformation/reconstruction, in low-cost mobile devices. In this study, we propose a client-side rendering low-cost computation algorithm for common two- and three-dimensional medical imaging visualization implemented by pure JavaScript. Particularly, we used the functions of cascading style sheet transform and combinate with Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM)-related imaging to replace the application programming interface with high computation to reduce the computation time and save memory consumption while launching medical imaging interpretation on web browsers. The results show the proposed algorithm significantly reduced the consumption of central and graphics processing units on various web browsers. The proposed algorithm was implemented in an open-source web-based DICOM viewer BlueLight; the results show that it has sufficient rendering performance to display 3D medical images with DICOM-compliant annotations and has the ability to connect to image archive via DICOMweb as well.Keywords: WebGL, DICOMweb, Multiplanar reconstruction, Volume rendering, DICOM, JavaScript, Zero-footprint.

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Availability of Data and Material

Use the following data for experiments available on: https://viewer.imaging.datacommons.cancer.gov/viewer/1.3.6.1.4.1.14519.5.2.1.6279.6001.224985459390356936417021464571?seriesInstanceUID=1.2.276.0.7230010.3.1.3.0.57823.1553343864.578877,1.3.6.1.4.1.14519.5.2.1.6279.6001.273525289046256012743471155680

Code Availability

(software application): https://github.com/cylab-tw/bluelight

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Funding

This work was supported by two grants from the Ministry of Science and Technology Taiwan (MOST 110–2634-F-006–022 and MOST 110–2221-E-227–002).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Management, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, Taipei, Taiwan

    Tseng-Tse Chen & Chung-Yueh Lien

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Tseng-Tse Chen & Woei-Chyn Chu

  3. School of Medicine, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Ying-Chou Sun

  4. Deptartment of Radiology, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan

    Ying-Chou Sun

  5. Department of Medical Imaging and Radiological Technology, Yuanpei University of Medical Technology, Hsinchu, Taiwan

    Ying-Chou Sun

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  1. Tseng-Tse Chen
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  4. Chung-Yueh Lien
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Tseng-Tse Chen, Ying-Chou Sun, and Chung-Yueh Lien. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Tseng-Tse Chen, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Chung-Yueh Lien.

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Chen, TT., Sun, YC., Chu, WC. et al. BlueLight: An Open Source DICOM Viewer Using Low-Cost Computation Algorithm Implemented with JavaScript Using Advanced Medical Imaging Visualization. J Digit Imaging 36, 753–763 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-022-00746-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-022-00746-0

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