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Web Workers

Introduction

Medical Imaging applications often involve CPU intensive computation for tasks such as image decompression and image processing. CornerstoneWADOImageLoader includes a framework for executing such tasks in a pool of web workers thus allowing your application to take advantage of all CPU cores and avoid locking up the UI thread. This web worker framework is used for image decompression but is designed to be usable for custom tasks as well. By using the cornerstone web worker framework for your CPU intensive tasks, you can better control the utilization of the available CPU cores.

Features

  • Allows applications to control how many web workers are spawned
  • Includes a task for decoding DICOM Images
  • Allows applications to add custom web worker tasks
  • Allows applications to assign a priority to web worker tasks
  • Allows applications to pass in web worker task specific configuration options

Examples

See the Custom Web Worker Task Example to see the above features in action.

Configuration

The web worker framework requires a bit of configuration since web workers require paths to source files. Since cornerstone does not enforce a convention for source file location, you must tell the cornerstone web worker framework where the web worker files are so it can load them properly. This is done via the cornerstoneWADOImageLoader.webWorkerManager.initialize() function. You must call this function before using starting a web worker task (or loading an image with cornerstone) so the web worker code is properly loaded.

Minimal Configuration

Here is an example of a minimal configuration object.

var config = {
  maxWebWorkers: navigator.hardwareConcurrency || 1,
  startWebWorkersOnDemand: true,
};
cornerstoneWADOImageLoader.webWorkerManager.initialize(config);

Advanced Configuration

Building on the prior minimal example, you can configure the web worker framework in several ways.

var config = {
  maxWebWorkers: navigator.hardwareConcurrency || 1,
  startWebWorkersOnDemand: true,
  webWorkerTaskPaths: [
    '../examples/customWebWorkerTask/sleepTask.js',
    '../examples/customWebWorkerTask/sharpenTask.js',
  ],
  taskConfiguration: {
    decodeTask: {
      initializeCodecsOnStartup: false,
    },
    sleepTask: {
      sleepTime: 3000,
    },
  },
};
cornerstoneWADOImageLoader.webWorkerManager.initialize(config);

  • maxWebWorkers - controls how many web workers to create. Some browsers will return the number of cores available via the navigator.hardwareConcurrency. For those browsers that don't support this property, the default number of web workers is set to 1. The web worker framework will automatically use this property or set to 1 web worker if not available. You can override the number of web workers by setting this property yourself. You may want to do this to add support for additional web workers on browsers that don't support navigator.hardwareConcurrency or if you find that using all cores slows down the main ui thread too much.

  • startWebWorkersOnDemand - true if you want to create web workers only when needed, false if you want them all created on initialize (default).

  • webWorkerTaskPaths - This is an array of paths to custom web worker tasks. See section "Custom Web Worker Tasks" below for more information.

  • taskConfiguration.decodeTask.initializeCodecsOnStartup - By default, the web worker framework does not initialize the JPEG2000 or JPEG-LS decoders on startup. Initialization takes even more CPU (and time) than loading so it is disabled by default. If you expect to display JPEG-LS or JPEG2000 images frequently, you might want to enable this flag.

  • taskConfiguration.sleepTask.sleepTime - This is a configuration option for a custom web worker task, See "Custom Web Worker Tasks" section below.

Custom Web Worker Tasks

If you want to create your own custom web worker tasks, follow the following steps:

  1. Create a new source file for your custom web worker task (e.g. sleepTask.js)

  2. Add the path to that source file in the webWorkerTaskPaths array

  3. Register your custom web worker task with the framework by calling self.registerTaskHandler() function. This function accepts an object with three properties:

    • taskType - A unique string used to dispatch task requests to your custom web worker task
    • handler - function that is called when work is dispatched to your custom web worker task
    • initialize - function that is called when the web worker is first initialized and passed in the taskConfiguration object passed to the web worker framework when initialize() is called

  4. Implement your handler function. The handler function will receive two parameters - the first being the data for the task and the second being a callback function.

  5. Invoke the callback function with the result. The first parameter is an object that will be returned to the UI thread when the related promise is resolved. The second is an optional transferList which is an array of references to objects to transfer to the UI thread (via postMessage)

  6. Queue a task for your custom web worker from the UI Thread using cornerstoneWADOImageLoader.webWorkerManager.addTask. This function takes three parameters:

  • taskType - This should match the taskId registered by your custom web worker task in step 6 above
  • data - This is an object you want passed to your web worker task. This can include pixel data or whatever else you want
  • priority - integer with lower numbers being higher priority. if not specified a priority of 0 is used. Note that decode tasks currently use a priority of 5 And returns an object with the following properties
  • taskId - unique id for this task
  • promise - a promise that is resolved when the task completes
  1. Have the UI thread set a then handler on the returned promise to get the result the custom web worker returned in step 5 above.