Abstracts

Rationale: A critical problem cutting across neuroscience, neurology and neurosurgery is visualizing the myriad types of data generated during even routine clinical and research studies. Common software tools provide expensive, closed-source solutions that can lock your data into a single vendor ecosystem and limit your ability to share findings with others that lack specific software. Even the seemingly simple task of sharing data with departmental colleagues can be stymied by restrictive licenses that limit software installs to a single computer—sharing results requires sharing a physical laptop or just sending screenshots/power point files with zero interactivity.

Methods: To overcome the problems of expensive software tools that limit data sharing, we have developed the free and open-source RAVE brain viewer (https://rave.wiki).

Results: The viewer has three key advantages. First, the visualization engine lives within a single HTML file. Imaging data, electrode locations, and functional data can be viewed by anyone with a web browser. Sharing data means sending a file to a colleague, and the data remain fully-interactive. Second, the viewer supports a large array of 2D and 3D data types: datasets can be displayed by dragging and dropping the file onto the viewer (such as activity or connectivity data at individual brain voxels, surface nodes, or electrode contacts). Third, the viewer supports a growing number of next-generation electrodes, such as the Precision Neuroscience micro-arrays. In a common use case, users visualize results from brain imagining, electrophysiological monitoring, and tractography streamlines all using just a web browser and single downloadable HTML file. For users requiring more data manipulation tools (e.g., co-registering CT/MRI, localizing electrodes, warping subject data to template space), we also have downloadable software tools that are also free and open source. Importantly, these software tools can generate standalone RAVE brain viewers that can be used by others without installing extra tools.

Conclusions: Our newly released brain visualization engine provides access to myriad data types without requiring any software installation, easily incorporating into existing workflows.

Funding: 1R01MH133717