Representation of anatomy in a virtual form is at the heart of clinical decision making, biomedical research, and medical training. Virtual anatomy is not limited to description of geometry but also requires appropriate and efficient labeling of regions - to define spatial relationships and interactions between anatomical objects; effective strategies for pointwise operations - to define local properties, biological or otherwise; and support for diverse data formats and standards - to facilitate exchange between clinicians, scientists, engineers, and the general public. Development of aeva, a free and open source software package (library, user interfaces, extensions) capable of automated and interactive operations for virtual anatomy annotation and exchange, is in response to these currently unmet requirements.
aeva (annotation and exhange of virtual anatomy) is a software suite designed to work with virtual anatomy in various forms. With aeva, one can navigate anatomical information that may be in the form of images (DICOM, NIfTI), surface meshes (stl, ply, vtk) and as volume meshes (vtk, med, exodus). aeva aims to provide import/export of anatomy in various formats and annotation by selecting regions and defining attributes. Templating of annotation can be achieved with simple schemas, e.g. one designed for the knee joint.
aeva software suite currently consists of:
aevaSlicer aevaSlicer will be familiar to users of Slicer. The interface is customized and new features have been added to accommodate a workflow amenable to generation of surface and volume meshes of anatomy from medical images.
aevaCMB aevaCMB will be familiar to users of ParaView and Computational Model Builder. The interface is customized and new features have been added to support operations for import and export of anatomical representations and for annotation (template based and freeform, including a powerful set of region selection).
Selection demo:
Example tutorial: