Amira 5.2 What's New?

Several important changes and improvements have been introduced in Amira
with the release 5.2. Amira is now even more powerful and even more focussed on Life Science.

Get an idea of what it looks like with some snapshots and see the
technical release details and documentation!

New Multi Planar Viewer
The new Multi Planar Viewer is a special purpose sub-application for visualizing and exploring
up to two data sets simultaneously using three Multi-Planar Reformat (MPR) viewers and
one 3D viewer showing the data set(s) as volume rendering(s). The visualized volumes cannot
only be explored and compared, but they can also be aligned and registered using integrated tools.
This viewer is dedicated explicitly to users in biomedical research who need to visually explore
and/or register image data with a few clicks in an easy-to-use and high quality visualization
framework. The Multi Planar Viewer is part of the Amira Standard Edition.

New Tridelity module for autostereoscopic display
New module TridelityView allows the main Amira viewer to be displayed in the following
autostereoscopic displays: Tridelity Multi-View 19", 27", 42", and 57".

New readers and writers
  • New SWC reader and writer for neuroscience – The new Duke-Southampton SWC reader and
    writer for neuronal morphology supports the import and export in SWC format. This format
    can be used, for example, with the cvapp application allowing the conversion between various
    neuron morphology formats.
  • New Olympus OIB/OIF readers for images acquired with Olympus confocal microscopes of
    the FluoView 1000 generation.
  • Added support for 1-bit TIFF images.

New display modules
The new display modules to visualize 2D slices with 3D surface effects make the exploration
of the volume easier and more flexible even for very large data sets:
  • New BumpSlice display module. Displays orthogonal slices with embossed mapping
    on any regular scalar field.
  • New CityPlot display module. This module displays a scalar data field as a 3D histogram.
  • New ClusterStringLabels display module. This module visualizes string labels associated
    with data objects of type Cluster.

Enhanced Filament Editor interface (Microscopy/ResolveRT Option)
The user interface of the Filament Editor has been reorganized to enable a faster and
more accurate tracing, and an enhanced structural representation of filament networks:
  • In order to facilitate the use of the tools, only two tabs are now available in the tool box,
    the View Options and the Tools tabs.
  • The Autoskeleton Options and the graph analysis tools have been reorganized in the Tools tab.
  • A new icon has been added to the toolbar to activate the tracer, while the tracing options have
    been moved into the Tools tab.
  • The Preview option toggle has been removed. Instead, there is now a button next to the
    Window Level slider similar to the Segmentation Editor. When the button is pressed, the
    Alpha slider is available below the Window Level slider.
  • The Show Thick Slice toggle has been removed from the tool box. The functionality is now
    available as a button next to the Thickness slider.

Improved hardware compatibility with Volren
Added support for a wide range of graphics boards (see System Requirements above).

Improved documentation
New tutorials and demos designed for Life Science and a faster keyword-searching
algorithm allow the user to easily extend his or her application knowledge.

Further improvements and new modules
  • Improved DemoMaker - The DemoMaker script has been improved for handling complex sequences.
  • Improved user interface of the Measurement Tool - The handling of the measurement
    tool has been reworked so that the Add button has become obsolete. The tool is activated
    by clicking the button in the viewer tool bar. When active, clicking in the viewer creates and
    modifies measurements or annotations.
  • New LDA Display Modules - The new interpolation type (“multi-samples”) on LDA ortho and
    oblique slices provides much higher quality images than linear interpolation. ArithmeticRendering:
    arbitrary arithmetic according to a user-defined arithmetic expression of up to three inputs
    according to a user-defined arithmetic expression. CastLattice: changes or converts the
    primitive data type of out-of-core data.
  • Improved LDA OrthoSlice and ObliqueSlice - The new interpolation type (“multi-samples”)
    on LDA ortho and oblique slices provides much higher quality images than linear interpolation.
  • Improved Voltex LDA - The Voltex LDA module has been improved in quality and performance options.