The programme kslice_3d
is the Karma version of an
idea of François Viallefond (a program called 3view). Also
GIPSY has an implementation of something very similar. Because
Karma is much more designed for this kind of work,
kslice_3d
is much faster than the other two versions.
The program shows 3 images in a window, being the data cube sliced
along the principle planes. The top left image is a XY image
(so for a radio cube this would be a channel), the bottom image is
XZ (so normally ) and the top right ZY
(
). With the mouse one can interactively change the planes
that are shown. If the mouse is in the XY image, the other two
images are the XZ and the ZY image corresponding the the
(x,y) position of the cursor. Alternatively, if the mouse is in
one of the two other images, the XY image shown is the image
corresponding to the Z-coordinate of the mouse.
kslice_3d
is fast enough (contrary to 3view and
GIPSY) that if you move the mouse while keeping the left button
pressed, the images are updated real time.
Note that the volume rendering programme xray will
automatically display a kslice_3d
window so that you can
slice through the cube as well as volume render it.
There are only a few buttons in kslice_3d
:
If a cube is loaded, the images to display are not computed
automatically. If next you move the mouse, kslice_3d
will
have to compute the image that is has to display in real time. This
makes things a bit slow sometimes. Clicking Precompute will
make
kslice_3d
compute all the images it can display. This
takes a few seconds, but it makes the update of the images very fast.
Note that to run smoothly, kslice_3d
requires quite a bit
of memory, certainly if you expand the images. If this gives problems,
try running it sitting in front of phoenix. Note that the memory
requirement is on the machine you are sitting in front of, not the
machine that you are running the programme on (although for best
performance they should be the same).
There are three sliders that control the size of the three images. If
you expand too much, kslice_3d
will not display anything
(i.e. you will see a blank window). Just reduce your expansion factor
appropriately until the display re-appears.
If you want to make the images larger than the window would allow, you can resize the window (drag on the bottom right corner) and after this increase the magnifications.