brainR: Interactive 3 and 4D Images of High Resolution Neuroimage Data

Authors

John Muscelli, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Elizabeth Sweeney, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, National Institute of Health
Ciprian Crainiceanu, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Date of this Version

6-2014

Document Type

Article

Citation

The R Journal (June 2014) 6(1); Editor: Deepayan Sarkar

Comments

Copyright 2014, The R Foundation. Open access material. License: CC BY 3.0 Unported

Abstract

We provide software tools for displaying and publishing interactive 3-dimensional (3D) and 4-dimensional (4D) figures to html webpages, with examples of high-resolution brain imaging. Our framework is based in the R statistical software using the rgl package, a 3D graphics library. We build on this package to allow manipulation of figures including rotation and translation, zooming, coloring of brain substructures, adjusting transparency levels, and addition/or removal of brain structures. The need for better visualization tools of ultra high dimensional data is ever present; we are providing a clean, simple, web-based option. We also provide a package (brainR) for users to readily implement these tools.