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Annotate points on an arbitrary plane

Summary

Annotating points in 3D can be useful for picking particles in CryoET and annotating locations of landmarks. However, doing so on a 2D computer screen is challenging. Here we demonstrate how to use the point annotator, which annotates points on arbitrary slicing planes.

Instructions

  1. Open the plane_point_annotator.py example from the examples folder. The viewer is initialized in 3D rendering mode in plane rendering mode. We are viewing two 3D volumes, each with one plane being actively rendered.

    example opened

  2. Activate the plugin. Select the orange layer for the "image layer" and Points for the "points layer". Finally click the "activate" button. This will add points to the Points layer based on the intersection of the click ray with the currently rendered orange layer.

    select layer

  3. You can translate the rendered orange play along its normal vector by holding the shift key while clicking with the left mouse button and dragging the plane.

  4. You can add points on the rendered plane by holding the alt key while clicking with the left mouse button. You can move the plane to annotate a new plane by clicking and dragging with the shift key as in step 3.