SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — A grieving but determined father has developed a free, private MRI viewer designed to help families track tumor progression, inspired by his six-year-old daughter Mira’s battle with a rare brain tumor. The tool, MiraViewer, allows users to align, compare, and visualize multiple MRI scans locally on their browser, with no uploads or cloud storage.

Last September, Mira was diagnosed with an adamantinomatous craniopharyngioma, an extremely rare brain tumor. Since then, her family has pursued every possible avenue for treatment, including assembling a private research team, raising $1.4 million for experimental therapies at the Hank Mitra Lab at the University of Colorado, exploring off-label and investigational drugs, and collaborating with MD Anderson Cancer Center to develop a personalized vaccine.

After initial surgery, scans revealed that the tumor had continued to grow. In April, under the care of Dr. Sabine Mueller at UCSF Children’s Hospital and researchers at the Hank Mitra Lab, Mira began an experimental treatment combining tocilizumab, an arthritis drug that blocks IL-6 receptors, with Avastin, a colon cancer drug that inhibits VEGF proteins. To the family’s relief, the tumor has responded remarkably well.

Monitoring progress, however, has been a painstaking process. Each MRI scan must be carefully matched to previous scans by plane, slice, rotation, zoom, and brightness to accurately compare tumor size and location. “We got pretty good at this,” said Mira’s father and tech entrepreneur Siqi Chen, “but it shouldn’t be this hard.”

The newly developed MiraViewer solves these challenges. Users can import DICOM MRI files in bulk, then quickly align scans across multiple dates. By drawing a rectangle around the tumor on any image, the tool automatically finds the closest matching slice in other scans, adjusts for brightness, contrast, rotation, pan, zoom, and even shear. It also includes grid and overlay views for side-by-side comparison, and the ability to animate scans over time to visualize progression.

MiraViewer is fully open source and runs entirely locally in the browser, ensuring privacy. The code is available on GitHub (https://github.com/blader/MiraViewer), and the application can be accessed at miraviewer.org.

The tool has already provided relief and clarity to Mira’s family. “Every scan is a chance to see how she’s responding,” said Chen. “This makes it faster, easier, and far less stressful to monitor her progress.”

He encouraged families facing similar battles to explore the tool and suggested donations to the UCSF Children’s Hospital Foundation to support the care that has given Mira a fighting chance.