An Open-Source Web-Based Viewer for Disseminating Image-Derived Models

Abstract

Patient-specific 3-dimensional (3D) models are increasingly central to planning surgery and catheter-based intervention in children with congenital heart disease (CHD), whose anatomy is often atypical and variable. These models inform care only when the surgeons and interventional cardiologists who make treatment decisions can rotate, crop, and measure them directly. Desktop modeling applications require local installation, capable hardware, and training. Commercial web-based viewers are portable but closed, and, in our experience, cannot display volume rendering, time-resolved (e.g., 4-dimensional) data, or the custom workflows centers build for CHD. Because CHD populations are small and heterogeneous, such workflows are unlikely to be prioritized commercially, and end users have no means to add them. To address these limitations, we developed the SlicerHeart Viewer, an open-source module that presents a simplified interface to a complete 3D Slicer/SlicerHeart session running on a server. Clinicians access models created by clinical modeling services from any device through a web browser. Because 3D Slicer runs underneath, volume rendering, time-resolved data, and any SlicerHeart workflow, including those developed for CHD, are available without modification. The module is independent of the hosting environment; we chose internal servers behind institutional single sign-on, and a cloud-hosted option is in development. Over one year at a single pediatric center, nearly all of 82 modeled cases were shared through the Viewer with clinicians from five specialties, with cases loading in 5 to 10 seconds. The approach is not specific to CHD and is deployable at other centers.

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Cite

BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@misc{herz2026opensource,
  title = {{An Open-Source Web-Based Viewer for Disseminating Image-Derived Models}},
  author = {Christian Herz and Kyle Sunderland and Matthew Daemer and Julia Iacovella and Sehdev Pressley and Ashley Koluda and Csaba Pinter and Kevin Zuber and John Daniels and Allen Ladd and Mali Hetmaniuk and Kevin K. Whitehead and Andras Lasso and Matthew A. Jolley},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.19237},
  eprint = {2610.19237},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19237},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - An Open-Source Web-Based Viewer for Disseminating Image-Derived Models
AU  - Christian Herz
AU  - Kyle Sunderland
AU  - Matthew Daemer
AU  - Julia Iacovella
AU  - Sehdev Pressley
AU  - Ashley Koluda
AU  - Csaba Pinter
AU  - Kevin Zuber
AU  - John Daniels
AU  - Allen Ladd
AU  - Mali Hetmaniuk
AU  - Kevin K. Whitehead
AU  - Andras Lasso
AU  - Matthew A. Jolley
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/19
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.19237
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.19237
AB  - Patient-specific 3-dimensional (3D) models are increasingly central to planning surgery and catheter-based intervention in children with congenital heart disease (CHD), whose anatomy is often atypical and variable. These models inform care only when the surgeons and interventional cardiologists who make treatment decisions can rotate, crop, and measure them directly. Desktop modeling applications require local installation, capable hardware, and training. Commercial web-based viewers are portable but closed, and, in our experience, cannot display volume rendering, time-resolved (e.g., 4-dimensional) data, or the custom workflows centers build for CHD. Because CHD populations are small and heterogeneous, such workflows are unlikely to be prioritized commercially, and end users have no means to add them. To address these limitations, we developed the SlicerHeart Viewer, an open-source module that presents a simplified interface to a complete 3D Slicer/SlicerHeart session running on a server. Clinicians access models created by clinical modeling services from any device through a web browser. Because 3D Slicer runs underneath, volume rendering, time-resolved data, and any SlicerHeart workflow, including those developed for CHD, are available without modification. The module is independent of the hosting environment; we chose internal servers behind institutional single sign-on, and a cloud-hosted option is in development. Over one year at a single pediatric center, nearly all of 82 modeled cases were shared through the Viewer with clinicians from five specialties, with cases loading in 5 to 10 seconds. The approach is not specific to CHD and is deployable at other centers.
ER  -

Abstract

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