A 3D Slicer module introducing a new displayable manager architecture for layered rendering and interaction handling.
The API Reference documentation provides API-level documentation.
SlicerLayerDisplayableManager is a module designed to simplify the integration of new display pipelines in 3D Slicer. It introduces a flexible and extensible framework for managing layered rendering, interaction forwarding, and camera synchronization across multiple pipelines.
This module aims to address common limitations in existing displayable managers by offering a more modular and injectable design.
- Factorize pipeline creation and teardown
- Enable layered rendering and interaction forwarding
- Maintain focus continuity across pipelines
- Synchronize cameras across views and layers
- Centralize render request handling
The current displayable manager (DM) architecture in 3D Slicer presents several structural and usability limitations:
- Redundant logic: Each DM reimplements pipeline instantiation and renderer setup independently.
- Custom camera sync: Camera synchronization strategies are manually implemented per DM, leading to inconsistent behavior.
- Complexity growth: DMs tend to accumulate unrelated logic over time, making them harder to maintain and extend.
- Focus handling: Focus decisions are based on proximity to interaction only, without consideration for layer priority.
- Factory instantiation: DMs are created using string-based factories, preventing injection of shared dependencies or services.
The module introduces a new architecture to improve development quality and scalability for visualization widgets:
- Centralized pipeline management: Pipelines are automatically created and deleted by the displayable manager.
- Dependency injection: Lambda and callback-based creators allow find pipeline creation control and injection of shared logic at pipeline creation.
- Modular camera synchronization: A dedicated synchronizer handles camera updates across views and layers for pipelines following the main camera.
- Layer-aware interaction: Pipelines declare their render layer with arbitrary values, enabling prioritized focus and interaction handling without handling the finer grained VTK logic.
- Python integration: A Python abstract class enables rapid development and integration of pipelines.
These changes simplify the development of new widgets, reduce boilerplate, and improve maintainability of existing visualization components.
- Pipeline registration via factory and creator API
- Lambda and callback support for dependency injection
- Customizable observer update pattern
- First-class Python abstract pipeline class
For more information on the extension's architecture, please refer to the online documentation.
The extension can be installed through the extension manager from 3D Slicer 5.10 onwards:
To use this extension checkout the getting started documentation.
And refer to the examples.