---
title: "Description"
description: "What LumiScan Annotation Web does: oriented boxes in the browser, projects, roles, several annotators per image, box suggestions, history and notes."
product: "LumiScan Annotation Web"
component: "lumiscan-annotation-web"
version: "2.4.1"
display_version: "2.4.1.2"
latest_version: true
language: "en"
url: "https://docs.hdvisionsystems.com/en/lumiscan-annotation-web/description.html"
---

# Description – LumiScan Annotation Web

LumiScan Annotation Web creates the training data for neural networks that detect and locate objects, for example for LumiScan AI Object Matching or LumiScan VGR. You draw an **oriented bounding box** (a rectangle that can be rotated) around each object in an image and give it a label, the class of the object. LumiScan Training learns from these boxes.

It is the successor of the desktop tool LumiScan Annotation. The annotation logic runs in a server; people annotate in their web browser, from any PC in the company network, without installing anything.

## What it offers

- **Annotating:**
  - Oriented boxes drawn as [center-line rectangles](https://docs.hdvisionsystems.com/en/lumiscan-annotation-web/annotating-images.html#center-line-rectangle) in three clicks, moved, resized and rotated with the mouse or the keyboard.
  - A magnifier with crosshair at the mouse pointer for edges to a tenth of a pixel.
  - Labels with keys 1 to 9, brightness and contrast, a region of interest.
  - For image series: boxes from the previous image, onto the next images, copy and paste, and box templates per label.
  - Undo and redo, and a history of every saved state of every image.
- **Working as a team:**
  - **Projects**: independent annotation jobs, each with its own images, settings and members.
  - **Roles**: annotator, reviewer, project admin and server admin. The server enforces them.
  - **Sign-in** with local accounts, the company directory (Active Directory / LDAP) or single sign-on (OpenID Connect, for example Keycloak or Microsoft Entra ID).
  - **Edit locks**: an image being edited is read-only for the others.
  - **Revision notes**: a reviewer leaves an instruction on an image for an annotator.
- **Quality:**
  - **Several annotators per image**: each annotates the image independently, without seeing the others' boxes.
  - The server compares their boxes. When all agree, it writes the reference annotation itself.
  - Reviewers see the differences numbered on the image and decide with one click.
  - Agreement statistics per annotator, per pair of annotators and per folder.
- **Speed:**
  - **Box suggestions** from your trained LumiScan networks (ONNX), or from an open-vocabulary detector for parts without a network yet. You accept, correct or discard them.
  - **Active learning**: the network rates every image; the ones it is least sure about are annotated first.
  - Search and filters: by file name, without boxes, by label, with notes for you, marked done, by training / validation / test set.
  - **Done marks**: mark an image as finished, also without boxes; `Shift+D` marks and goes on.
- **Data:**
  - The annotation files are byte-identical to those of the desktop tool: a CSV file with the boxes and a JSON file with the save history next to each image. LumiScan Training and other tools read them unchanged.
  - Projects in folders on the server or a network share, or in an S3 bucket (AWS S3, MinIO, SeaweedFS).
  - Export and import of whole projects, for example to send a project to HD Vision Systems for annotation.
  - Images in PNG, JPEG, BMP and TIFF, also multi-page TIFF (page by page), added from the server’s folders or [from the browser](https://docs.hdvisionsystems.com/en/lumiscan-annotation-web/adding-images.html).
  - **Export for LumiScan Training**: a ready Training project with a stable split into training, validation and test images; the same images and split also in the **COCO** format for other tools.
  - A **single-PC installation** for one person on one PC, in its own window, without sign-in.
  - Automatic backups of everything the server keeps.

## How it works

The **server** (`lumiscan-annotation-server`, Windows or Linux) serves the web pages and the REST API. It reads the images, writes every annotation file, checks every input and enforces the roles. Its own data (accounts, projects, history, notes) is kept in a database file next to its configuration.

The **browser** shows the images and draws the boxes. Nothing is saved without the server.

The optional **box suggestion service** runs the networks on a computer with a GPU and answers the server’s requests. Images never leave the company network.

```none
browser  --HTTP(S)-->  lumiscan-annotation-server  --->  project folders or S3 bucket
                              |                            <image>.png, .csv, .json
                              +--->  box suggestion service (optional, GPU)
```

## Terms

- **Annotation:** the boxes of one image, saved in `<image>.csv`.
- **Label:** the class of an object, for example `bracket`. The labels of a project are shared by everyone in it.
- **Bottom edge:** the edge of a box drawn in green. It gives the box its direction: an angle of 0 means the box top points up.
- **Reference annotation:** with several annotators per image, the annotation training uses. Written automatically when the annotators agree, or decided by a reviewer.
- **Region of interest (ROI):** the part of the images that is annotated. Suggestions outside it are left out.