Slicer3:UIDesign:WorkingProblems:SlicerUsabilityInTractography:Semantics

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Comments about the differences between Slicer's semantics and that of other software:

Seems that Slicer's taxonomy of the entities that can comprise a scene can be confusing. We should try to at least define the concepts we use so users can understand how to regard the scene itself, and things that populate it.

• A new user may not understand what a scene is.
• An ROI is a general term in practice; Slicer uses it to mean an object that delimits the region.
• What distinguishes a fiducial and a glyph?
• What distinguishes a glyph with a defined dimension (diameter for instance) and an ROI?
• Is there a distinction between a manually defined painted region and predefined circle or sphere?
• What distinguishes a label map and a scalar overlay?
• What distinguishes the FG/BG layers and a label layer?
• Slicer's scene contains entities besides what users commonly regard as data. So would be good to clarify a taxonomy of entities for these things (camera, view, layout, parameter nodes, etc.) in a scene. Data objects, display configuration objects, algorithm parameterization objects? Any ideas about this?

Below is a table of confusing Slicer terms and what they map to in IGT user language.

Slicer Terminology	Suggested terminology
Volume	ImageData
ROI(3D)	Volume
ROI	ROI (very general term -- could be pixel, pixels in slice, anatomic region, pixels in volume, set of pixels in multi-volumes)
Scene	? All data and its configuration
Label	Labeled ROI
fiducial	marker
Glyph	marker-type
surface	?
Model	?
Volume rendering	type of data display
Labelmap	Labeled overlay
Overlay	Parametric overlay

Priority items: (blocking project progress)

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