Navigation and cine

Moving through a 2D stack

Scroll the mouse wheel, drag a slider, or use on-screen stack controls to move along the slice direction. Window and level is a separate tool. This page is only about position and time.

On a long CT you might scroll quickly in lung window, stop at something wrong, then slow down for the exact slice of maximal diameter. On MR with many series, click the viewport you mean first so the wheel does not scroll a pane you are not looking at.

Cine

Cine plays temporal or through-plane sequences. Turn it on from the toolbar, then use play, pause, and rate as your build exposes them. Cardiac CT and dynamic sequences benefit from a quick visual sweep. Motion checks in a long acquisition often show respiration or swallow better than a single static slice. Cine is not a dedicated cardiac workstation for frame timing metrics. For triage it is enough to see motion and rough timing when the DICOM is present.

3D and MPR tools

When a viewport is volume-capable, Navigate exposes crosshairs and 3D rotation. Volume-only features stay disabled on pure 2D stacks. CTA work often means rotating a 3D volume for stent and vessel relationships, then dropping an MPR reformat through a tortuous vessel. Orient before you segment when segmentation is enabled for your site.

Shortcuts worth muscle memory

h and z switch pan and zoom when you are done measuring or windowing. 1 and 2 jump to one-by-one and two-by-two. r resets after aggressive zoom. f fullscreen declutter. l starts a length measurement for a quick size check.

Pick a layout before you lean on cine. Some layouts only run cine in one pane. If you hit l, you are already on a measurement path.