Key Input

Cursor key input can be used to move all the windows by precise amounts, which is particularly useful when fine tuning the location or creating movies. These keys work in the image and 3D windows, and also the tracker-ball and tracker-grid controls for the reslice and ortho windows.

There are also a few key presses which affect how the visualisations appear.

Cursor keys

Left arrow

In the image window, this decrements the current frame by one, in the ortho windows, it offsets the reslice by a fixed number of pixels (see the Mouse and cursor settings), in the reslice and 3D windows it rotates the viewpoint. Similar effects are possible by pressing the left arrow over the tracker-ball and tracker-grids. Holding the shift-key down whilst pressing the left arrow twists the viewpoint. In the 3D window, holding the control-key down whilst using the left arrow moves the window location.

Right arrow

This has the opposite effect to the left arrow.

Down arrow

This is similar to the left arrow, except that when offseting the image window, the current frame moves to the next frame with a segmented object, and in the ortho windows the offset is moved by the DICOM slice thickness, for appropriate data sets.

Up arrow

This has the opposite effect to the down arrow.

Other keys

Space Bar or G

This toggles display of centres-of-gravity and names for surfaces in the 3D, reslice and ortho windows. It also toggles display of the patient orientation, if the data is of an appropriate DICOM format, the zoomed region, when not using the scrollbars, and the scale bars, when making measurements. This is the same as the overlay button on the toolbar.

P

This toggles the interpolation technique and can hence show the underlying data pixels.

L

This toggles display of lines (wireframe) rather than polygons when showing surfaces in the 3D window. This makes it possible to see the exact size and location of underlying surface triangles.

V

This shows the current orientation of the 3D window as a text string (view left x y z, then front x y z) which can be copied, pasted and edited. It can hence be used to set the viewpoint to a pre-defined value.

S

This shows the current scroll point of the (zoomed) 3D window as a text string (scroll x y) which can be copied, pasted and edited. It can hence be used to set the scroll point to a pre-defined value. Scroll x and y are floating point values between 0.0 and 1.0 and depend on the extent to which the window is currently zoomed.

C

This shows the current centre-of-gravity of the 3D window as a text string (centre x y z) which can be copied, pasted and edited. It can hence be used to set the location to a pre-defined value.