Similar reset is happening when switching to Editor module, or when changing the active volume in Editor. In our use case, this is very un-helpful.

The editor has been fixed so it no longer resets the view on enter.

Reseting the views on loading data is a little harder because I'm not sure where the option should be set. I suppose it should be an option in the view controllers and should also be handled by the link option.

From Andrew on Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 1:44 PM:
After a new resampled volume is created using the Resample Scalar Volume module, all of my slice views are modified to display the new volume in the background overlay, and removing the image in the foreground overlay as well. [...]

Following Andras's suggestion, maybe using the left column buttons could be a solution to "lock" the volume.
A menu that popups in the popup could offer a "lock" action.

We're interested in fixing this and want to understand the use case. Which features would be best to 'lock' and is it okay if they are all treated with a single lock icon.

One proposal: Lock state of the slice view means that when a new volume is loaded it is not made the background of the slice view and that the slice offset does not change to center on the newly loaded volume.

Another extension of this idea: a locked slice view does not allow you to change the window/level or move fiducials.

@fedorov can you comment?

I am not sure adding a new icon to the already overwhelmingly complicated slice controller popup is a good idea. There may be different use cases that are hard to predict in advance.

I would suggest that any features on the user/GUI level should be simple and minimally disruptive. At the same time, developer features (API) should be flexible to support highly configurable behavior of the slice view. Along those design considerations, I would suggest

1) on the user level I suggest two features:

1.1) add an advanced configuration option in the Slicer application settings which would disable reset of views and initialization of slice selectors when a new volume is added to the scene. It would be turned off by default. If it is turned on, we could remind the user via popup (that can be turned off) every time a new volume is added that it will not be displayed because of the setting.

1.2) a related (very simple and intuitive) feature undoing the reset was implemented by Andras for AutoRun in https://github.com/Slicer/Slicer/pull/105. Can we add an option not to modify volume selectors as a general feature of CLIs? This view reset is annoying not just for AutoRun.

2) on the developer level: consider adding more granular API to lock individual view features such as selectors, slice offset, zoom (right now, it allows configurable linking of selectors, zoom level - maybe locking can be implemented in a similar fashion?)

Just few ideas for discussion.

Note for developer:

• There is an attribute to prevent node selection propagation: vtkMRMLSliceCompositeNode:: SetDoPropagateVolumeSelection: http://slicer.org/doc/html/classvtkMRMLSliceCompositeNode.html#a260064b6b71eba2ff8f012ae43b78653
• I added an option (in a clone of Slicer) to the volume reader to control the "FitSliceToAll" behavior. That way I could prevent "reset" when loading files programatically:
  https://github.com/finetjul/Slicer/commit/69f1c9e7aac5df6598d4d87122092a4c0804cf98