Surface Length 3D – OsiriX Plugin

Important notice about SurfaceLength3D. It is not certified as a commercial medical device for primary diagnosis. There are no FDA/CE-1 certifications. You may only use this plugin as reviewing, research or teaching software — not for primary diagnostic, clinical workflow or patient care.

SurfaceLength3D computes geodesic (surface) distances between anatomical points on 3D DICOM surface renders using Dijkstra’s shortest-path algorithm on the VTK surface mesh. Standard DICOM software measures linear (Euclidean) distances — this plugin measures distances along curved surfaces, which is clinically critical when a straight ruler does not reflect anatomy (e.g. distance between visceral ostia on the aortic wall for graft planning).

Version 2.0 — Horos Modern (April 2026)

The plugin has been modernised for current macOS and 64-bit hosts. Source code and releases are on GitHub: alexandreamato/surfacelength3d-osirix-horos.

• Host: Horos 3.x and OsiriX MD (64-bit)
• macOS: 12 (Monterey) or later
• Architecture: Universal binary — Apple Silicon (arm64) and Intel (x86_64)
• ARC memory management; GCD background processing (non-blocking UI)
• Custom Dijkstra implementation (handles Horos VTK 8 runtime vs VTK 9 headers ABI difference)
• Programmatic UI (no XIBs); progress indicator; 3-step wizard
• Anatomical label presets (vascular, neurosurgery, plastic surgery), CSV export of measurements, vascular planning report, phantom validation mode

Download v2.0

Download SurfaceLength3D-v2.0-Horos.zip (from GitHub Releases)

Install

1. Unzip — you will get SurfaceLength3D.horosplugin
2. Move it to ~/Library/Application Support/Horos/Plugins/
3. Restart Horos
4. The plugin appears under Plugins → Other → Surface Length 3D

Usage

1. Open a DICOM series and segment the structure of interest (e.g. aorta)
2. Run the plugin from the Plugins menu
3. Step 1 — Open the MPR viewer and place ≥ 2 point ROIs on the anatomical landmarks
4. Step 2 — Start processing; the plugin detects the 3D surface and computes geodesic distances for every pair of points
5. Step 3 — View the radial distance chart and the colored path tubes on the 3D render

New demo

Legacy version — OsiriX 3.x (32-bit)

The original 2008 plugin is preserved for historical reference. It targets OsiriX 3.x (32-bit, macOS ≤ 10.14) and VTK 5.x. Under the Preferences pane Universal Access, enable Access for Assistive Devices.

Surface Length OsiriX Plugin from Alexandre Amato

Surface length 3d osirix from Alexandre Amato

Citation

Amato ACM. Surface Length 3D: Plugin do OsiriX para cálculo da distância em superfícies. J Vasc Bras. 2016;15(4):308-311. doi:10.1590/1677-5449.005316. Available at SciELO · PubMed/PMC.

Surface Length 3D: An OsiriX plugin for measuring length over surfaces