Iris RESTful Server and IrisTileSource: An Iris implementation for existing OpenSeaDragon viewers

TL;DR

This paper introduces Iris RESTful Server and IrisTileSource, enabling efficient streaming of high-resolution whole slide images in web viewers by integrating a high-performance REST API with OpenSeaDragon.

Contribution

Developed a C++ RESTful server compatible with DICOMweb WADO-RS, and integrated it with OpenSeaDragon for seamless WSI viewer support, improving performance and compatibility.

Findings

Handles over 5,000 requests per second on a Raspberry Pi-like system.

Provides median latency of 21 ms for image requests.

Enables drop-in replacement of DZI images in WSI viewers.

Abstract

The Iris File Extension (IFE) is a low overhead performance-oriented whole slide image (WSI) file format designed to improve the image rendering experience for pathologists and simplify image management for system administrators. However, static hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) file servers cannot natively stream subregions of high-resolution image files, such as the IFE. The majority of contemporary WSI viewer systems are designed as browser-based web applications and leverage OpenSeaDragon as the tile-based rendering framework. These systems convert WSI files to Deep Zoom Images (DZI) for compatibility with simple static HTTP file servers. To address this limitation, we have developed the Iris RESTful Server, a low-overhead HTTP server with a RESTful API that is natively compatible with the DICOMweb WADO-RS API. Written in C++ with Boost Beast HTTP and Asio networking libraries atop the public IFE libraries, the server offers both security and high performance. Testing shows that a single Raspberry Pi equivalent system can handle a peak of 5,061 req/s (average 3,883 req/s) with a median latency of 21 ms on a private (i.e. hospital) network. We also developed and merged a new OpenSeaDragon TileSource, compatible with the Iris RESTful API, into the next OpenSeaDragon release, enabling simple and immediate drop-in replacement of DZI images within WSI viewer stacks. Designed as a secure cross-origin resource sharing microservice, this architecture includes detailed deployment instructions for new or existing WSI workflows, and the public examples.restful.irisdigitalpathology.org subdomain is provided as a development tool to accelerate WSI web viewer development. All relevant Iris software is available under the open-source MIT software license.