Gizmo and customized surface cuts

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Hi igoristis,

I want to create a Gizmo with some fancy slices.

My starting point is the Gizmo slicer Panel. It creates slices at planes in the X,Y,Z direction.

Now I would like to define these surface planes more freely. For example I want them to hold data summed over multiple indizes, or even all planes in a direction.

For the z-direction I've succeeded by using a Surface with a Matrix wave as source, define my MxN surface wave with constant entries, and use "Color from wave" from a custom color table.
// create necessary waves
Function doStuff0()
    
    Wave data // 3D data to visualize
    Make/O/D/N=(DimSize(data,0),DimSize(data,1)) cut0
    cut0 = DimOffset(data,2)
    CopyScales data, cut0
 
    Duplicate/O cut0, sum0, col0
    
    Redimension/N=(-1,-1,4) col0
    variable sl
    
    // sum all layers
    variable i, j, k
    for(i=0; i < DimSize(data,0); i+=1)
        for(j=0; j < DimSize(data,1); j+=1)
            sl = 0
            for(k=0; k < DimSize(data,2); k+=1)
                sl += data[i][j][k]
            endfor
            sum0[i][j] = sl
        endfor
    endfor
    
    // color table magic
    colortab2wave Rainbow
    Wave m_colors
    Redimension/D/N=(-1,4) m_colors
    m_colors[][3] = 0 // alpha
    m_colors /=65535
    wavestats/Q sum0
    SetScale/I x, V_min, V_max, "", m_colors
    col0 = m_colors(sum0[p][q])[r]
End
 
///.. relevant gizmo code
    AppendToGizmo Surface=root:cut0,name=proj0
    ModifyGizmo ModifyObject=proj0 property={ surfaceColorType,3}
    ModifyGizmo ModifyObject=proj0 property={ srcMode,0}
    ModifyGizmo ModifyObject=proj0 property={ surfaceColorWave,root:col0}
//...



But how can I do that for the other dimensions? I've tried parametric and quad waves, but these don't allow setting a custom color wave in the way it is done with the Matrix wave as source.

I could translate and rotate my surface defined with Matrix wave as source. But this gets quite involved, as I have to keep track of wave scaling also. And speaking of complicated I'm not sure I want to involve textures either.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Thomas
Hello Thomas,

An easy way to accomplish what you want is to create a parametric wave for the desired plane and assign to it a color wave that represents your data. This is how the image on the left is created. The parametric wave happens to define a sphere and the data are sampled along a sphere in an MRI of a brain.

Obviously there are other ways to accomplish the same thing, e.g., using textures, but I really think the other approaches are far more complicated than using a parametric surface. Feel free to email me a sample experiment if you need more specific help.

A.G.
WaveMetrics, Inc.

March 26, 2014 at 04:55 pm - Permalink