Hide stacks windows

[Salim Kanoun]

Dear community,

We are working on a PET/CT viewer, for each study we need to load different
DICOM sequences.

The DICOM sequences are opened into stacks, for each PET/CT procedure we
need to open 2 to  3 stacks. If we need to compare a PET/CT to a previous
one we need to open 4 to 6 stacks.
Then the user use an another FIJI plugin to review the images.

The problem we met is that all those stacks are overcrowding the task bar
of the operating system.
The task list can easily reach 10 different windows (4 to 6 stacks + FIJI
windows  + DICOM reader plugin + Viewer plugin).

I would like to know if there is a feature to open a stack without having
multiple tasks in the OS.

I see different possibilities to solve the problem :

- Open a stack silently without showing any windows.
- Open a stack in a new windows but do not list it as a task in the OS.
- Merge all stacks in a same window. I know the merge function of stacks
but we can't use it because it change all matrix size while our data have
different matrix size. If a merge function could be made it had to respect
the original image property.
- Add the possibility to hide existing stacks, I know that there is a JAVA
function to hide the FIJI windows, a similar function to hide existing
stacks without killing them would be perfect (I think that solution will be
probably the best one).

If FIJI can provides us a function to hide those stacks we will be able to
make a option to make a minimal interface for basic users that need only to
focus on the viewer plugin and a "full display" for more advanced users
that will need to use other FIJI services for advanced processing.

Thanks for your help,

Best regards,

Salim Kanoun
MD

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ImageJ mailing list: http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/list.html

[ctrueden]

Hi Salim,

> The problem we met is that all those stacks are overcrowding the task bar
of
> the operating system.
> The task list can easily reach 10 different windows (4 to 6 stacks + FIJI
> windows  + DICOM reader plugin + Viewer plugin).
>
> I would like to know if there is a feature to open a stack without having
> multiple tasks in the OS.

Not in the user interface, as far as I know.

> - Open a stack silently without showing any windows.

Certainly that can be done using the Java API, or batch mode from a macro.

> - Open a stack in a new windows but do not list it as a task in the
> OS.

I was planning to implement that feature in the ImageJ2 Swing user
interface [1], but since development of that UI is currently shelved,
working on it hasn't been a priority.

> - Merge all stacks in a same window. I know the merge function of
> stacks but we can't use it because it change all matrix size while our
> data have different matrix size. If a merge function could be made it
> had to respect the original image property.

Seems messy, given that the stacks are different pixel resolutions. But you
could write a custom UI to do it.

> - Add the possibility to hide existing stacks, I know that there is a
> JAVA function to hide the FIJI windows, a similar function to hide
> existing stacks without killing them would be perfect (I think that
> solution will be probably the best one).

It's easy in Java code:

   imp.getWindow().setVisible(false);

But then you need to keep track of the ones you've hidden and provide the
user a way to show them again later, if you ever want them to come back.
Presumably this could be done as part of the Pet-Ct Viewer suite, though.

Regards,
Curtis

[1] Actually, for a different use case, but it would still accomplish your
goal here; see this post if curious: http://stackoverflow.com/q/16175884

On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 11:19 AM, Salim Kanoun <[hidden email]>
wrote:

> Dear community,
>
> We are working on a PET/CT viewer, for each study we need to load different
> DICOM sequences.
>
> The DICOM sequences are opened into stacks, for each PET/CT procedure we
> need to open 2 to  3 stacks. If we need to compare a PET/CT to a previous
> one we need to open 4 to 6 stacks.
> Then the user use an another FIJI plugin to review the images.
>
> The problem we met is that all those stacks are overcrowding the task bar
> of the operating system.
> The task list can easily reach 10 different windows (4 to 6 stacks + FIJI
> windows  + DICOM reader plugin + Viewer plugin).
>
> I would like to know if there is a feature to open a stack without having
> multiple tasks in the OS.
>
> I see different possibilities to solve the problem :
>
> - Open a stack silently without showing any windows.
> - Open a stack in a new windows but do not list it as a task in the OS.
> - Merge all stacks in a same window. I know the merge function of stacks
> but we can't use it because it change all matrix size while our data have
> different matrix size. If a merge function could be made it had to respect
> the original image property.
> - Add the possibility to hide existing stacks, I know that there is a JAVA
> function to hide the FIJI windows, a similar function to hide existing
> stacks without killing them would be perfect (I think that solution will be
> probably the best one).
>
> If FIJI can provides us a function to hide those stacks we will be able to
> make a option to make a minimal interface for basic users that need only to
> focus on the viewer plugin and a "full display" for more advanced users
> that will need to use other FIJI services for advanced processing.
>
> Thanks for your help,
>
> Best regards,
>
> Salim Kanoun
> MD
>
> --
> ImageJ mailing list: http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/list.html
>

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ImageJ mailing list: http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/list.html