Related Libraries
In this section we will explain various libraries that are related to Cornerstone3D.
History
Before explaining the libraries, we will first discuss the history of Cornerstone3D.
Prior to Cornerstone3D we developed and maintained cornerstone-core
and cornerstone-tools
since 2014. Since the significance of improvements in Cornerstone3D over cornerstone-core and Cornerstone3DTools over cornerstone-tools
is much greater, in long term we will switch our focus to Cornerstone3D and
provide adequate documentation for how to upgrade from legacy cornerstone
to the new Cornerstone3D. In the meantime, we will continue to maintain
the legacy cornerstone packages and take care of potential critical bugs.
In addition to the cornerstone-core and cornerstone-tools packages, we have also maintained
react-vtkjs-viewport our first iteration
to enable 3D rendering using vtk-js in React.
react-vtkjs-viewport is currently being used in the current main OHIF Viewer for the MPR
views. One of the main motivations that prompted the development of the Cornerstone3D was
the desire to be able to decouple the rendering from the UI by React similar to cornerstone-core.
In addition, react-vtkjs-viewport's memory management was a major challenge for more complex
scenarios such as a PET/CT fusion with 10 viewports. Similar to
legacy cornerstone, we will shift our efforts from react-vtkjs-viewport to use the new
Cornerstone3D and Cornerstone3DTools packages.
Libraries
vtk.js
vtk-js is an open-source javascript library for 3D computer graphics, image processing and visualization.
In the past, we have used vtk-js for rendering and interacting with 3D data
in react-vtkjs-viewport library. Cornerstone3D's Rendering Engine has been designed
to use vtk-js for 3D rendering. vtk-js has annotation support using tools, but we have
decided to use Cornerstone3DTools for this purpose, and only rely on vtk-js for
the actual rendering. Our roadmap (not funded yet) includes enabling usage of vtk-js
3D annotation tools in Cornerstone3D.
OHIF Viewer
Open Health Imaging Foundation (OHIF) image viewer is an open source image viewer
that is being used in academic and commercial projects such as The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) and NCI Imaging Data Commons.
It is an extensible web imaging
platform with zero footprint and installation required. Currently, OHIF 3.9 relies on the all the libraries in the Cornerstone3D monorepo for its image rendering and annotation features.