Development
All NiiVue development is public on GitHub. The main branch represents the most current state of NiiVue. Contributions to NiiVue are encouraged and welcomed.
Local Development
The hot-reloadable web page is the most responsive way to test and develop new features in NiiVue. Whenever any core source files are modified, the page at /niivue/packages/niivue/src/index.html automatically reloads to reflect those changes. You can edit this index.html file to load specific datasets or create custom examples that demonstrate new functionality or reproduce issues.
git clone git@github.com:niivue/niivue.git
cd niivue
npm install
npm run dev
The API documentation provides many live demos as recipes to illustrate the functionality. If you want to modify these demos, you can run them (though note that this mode is not hot-reloadable so you will have to re-run npm run demo after changing the core code).
git clone git@github.com:niivue/niivue.git
cd niivue
npm install
npm run demo
Documentation Development
The primary documentation uses Docusaurus. The easiest way to enhance this documentation is to use the hot-reloadable mode, where changes in the code are rapidly reflected in the locally hosted web browser pages.
git clone git@github.com:niivue/niivue.git
cd niivue
npm install
npm run build:niivue
npm run dev:docs
API Development
NiiVue has a Application Programming Interface (API) that allows developers to use embed into larger projects. The API has its own API online help, with many functions including live demo web pages that provide minimal web pages to showcase functionality. The code uses JSDoc annotations.
Alternatives
What makes NiiVue unique is its ability to simultaneously display all major neuroimaging data types in the browser—including volumetric voxels, surface meshes, tractography streamlines, statistical overlays, and connectomes. This versatility makes it a strong candidate for integrated web-based visualization. However, before committing development resources to a single platform, it may be worth considering whether an alternative tool better suits your specific needs. Below are some alternative voxel-based web tools worth exploring: