My name is Paul and for many years (almost a decade) I used a blender but in recent years I’ve stopped working in a blender for work on segmentation of medical imaging (computed tomography and electro magnetic resonance). I work at Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow (yes, I work at art university) and I’m the head of the 3D printing lab (we’ve got equipment and software from such companies as: 3DSystems, StrataSYS, Materialize).
I need your help: more and more people are getting to me to prepare the visualisation of a tumor in side there child head, so it might be manufactured on 3D printer . Unfortunately, not every tumor can be printed (in some cases the 3D print has no value for surgeons). Very often I am asked to present the model in the form of a computer projection and the best known tool for me is the blender.
Unfortunately, doctors do not have time to learn new programs, so I need to deliver theme extremely easy blend file browser (it can even be a modified interface) for: cardiac surgeons, neurosurgeons, angiologist.
Is there anyone who is eager to help one simple thing?
What’s needed:
exe program
tree with objects
choose a color palette (for the selected object)
set the transparency for each object
zooming and rotating view
I do not want to sound like desperate, but I am asking you for help as a person who’s preparing models for surgery for really small children (some have less than two weeks!), he’s doing it for idea, not for money.
the point is that:
blender is portable (it’s not so easy to install software on hospitals PC because the security policy)
medics in hospitals are work on different platforms: Windows, Linux, Mac
models are a private data, it’s illegal to transfer them to other company without patient (or parent) permission.
I would be tempted to port the 3d assets to ue4 game engine and just cobble together a ui that can select objects to go transparent/highlighted and whatnot.
Any engine with a visual scripting engine is something I would suggest for the noncoders / visual thinkers, actually if you know GoDot you could cobble together an example for them if you have time, it is for a good cause.
Security-wise, if they won’t run any random program they won’t/shouldn’t let you run a self-contained “exe model” (running random EXE’s is a huge security risk), and running something off a random USB stick would likewise be frowned upon (and could even result in USB ports being locked down…).
There’s similar problems with keeping the data private.
Like one of the other posters, I would recommend researching a stand-alone model viewer application which you can then recommend being adopted. If it is approved and becomes a requirement for normal operation then installation would be approved. While that can take some admin work (recommendations, supporting information, and so on) it can be done. And is better than trying to back-door your way around security restrictions.
I suspect the easiest way to sidestep the security would be to export a web app using the Armory engine and run it locally on the hospital machines’ web browsers. (it can just as easily produce an .exe if that works better)
Mind that Armory it’s still in alpha, so while it should work fine as a model viewer, your mileage may vary. I certainly wouldn’t bet my, or anyone else’s, life on it.
I think Blend4Web is the top option here. All you have to open is a html file… not an ONLINE html file, one from wherever - a single, self-contained html5 file. All computers and tablets should have a way of doing that. Without any customisation you are able to rotate the 3D model onscreen with the mousewheel. Adding buttons to show/hide objects should be easy enough - less of a learning curve to create that than starting on a game engine.
dgorsman
often medical examinations are on the CD with build DICOM browser, so you’re able to run any exe/sh file.
Blender4Web is a very good idea, but there might be problem with render objects that sometimes have around 1,5 milion points, on old PCs.
I’ve spoke with Bartek Skorupa (one that made node wrangler) and he’ll check how hard it will be to change blender’s UI so it will just have 1 button (import), colour picker, objects tree and transparency slider.
