3D models are required to be in JSON format in order to be parsed by Voxelent. However, medical surfaces are often in VTK format (or can be easily converted to VTK format using free cross-platform applications such as ITK SNAP). Therefore, to visualize medical surfaces, the very first step is to convert your VTK model to a JSON file by taking the following steps:

1.  Install Python

If you don’t have Python installed, please do so by downloading it from here.

2. Download the VTK importer

After downloading the voxelent’s source code from GitHub, you can find the VTK importer under: Voxelent/tools/importers/vtk2json.py

3. Convert your VTK model to JSON

Depending of the platform (Windows, Mac, or Linux) that you are using, the invocation of the vtk2json.py script might be different.

Windows

For instance, in Windows, if the python executable has been added to your PATH variable, and the VTK importer and VTK model are in the same folder then you can write something like this:

python vtk2json.py yourVTKModel.vtk yourJSONModel

If the Python executable has not been added to the PATH variable, or the VTK importer or the VTK model do not reside on the same folder, then you would write something like this:

../path/to/python.exe ../path/to/vtk2json.py ../path/to/yourVTKModel.vtk ../path/to/yourJSONModel

Note that the output (yourJSONModel) doesn’t include an extension .json at the end.

Mac or Linux

If you are using Mac or Linux, the python executable most likely is included on the system path variable and it can be invoked from any location. If you have the vtk importer script and your VTK model in the same folder, you can write something like this:

python vtk2json.py yourVTKModel.vtk yourJSONModel

When executing the script you will see a screen similar to the following:

Requirements for a successful conversion

In these examples, yourVTKModel.vtk is the original VTK file that you want to display on the web. This VTK file needs to be:

  • A VTK PolyData (not unstructured data yet sorry!)
  • It can contain POINTS, LINES, TRIANGLES but no POLYGONS!
  • The file has to be in ASCII format so the VTK parser can convert it

Weaving very large meshes

There are some cases where the model that we want to render has a very large number of indices. This is particularly common if we are handling patient models.

Due to the fact that WebGL only support 65K index elements per draw call, we need to partition the model in pieces that are ‘renderable’, this is, into pieces whose number of indices is 65K tops. Otherwise, we would not see anything being rendered.

Voxelent’s vtk2json.py handles this scenario and produces as many parts as required.

This is the case of the brain demo, where we are taking a very large mesh and we are subdividing it into renderable parts.

This process involves a bit of reindexing since every part need to have indices that start at zero.

This process is known in Voxelent as weaving.

 

That’s about it! Now you’re ready to view your VTK model on the World Wide Web 🙂