MorphoCloud provides on-demand, high-performance cloud computing instances to support computational morphology, 3D morphometrics, and biomedical imaging research. Instances run on JetStream2, a national research cloud operated by Indiana University and funded through ACCESS. Each instance comes pre-loaded with 3D Slicer, SlicerMorph, and a suite of additional tools (see Installed Software below), and is accessible from any web browser — no local installation required.

Instances are managed entirely through GitHub Issues. You request, control, and monitor your instance by opening an issue and posting commands as comments. To get started you'll need an ORCID iD (free to create), a GitHub account, and you must agree to the Usage Terms.

Important: MorphoCloud membership grants you access to request instances, but does not guarantee that compute resources will be available at any given time. Instance availability depends on the current capacity of JetStream2, a nationally shared research cloud. Before creating or unshelving an instance, we recommend always checking the real-time resource availability dashboard.

MorphoCloud has three access pathways depending on how you will use it.

For researchers and students who want a personal instance for their own work.

How to get access:

1. Go to join.morphocloud.org.
2. Sign in with your ORCID iD — the free, portable researcher identifier. (If you don't have one already, you can create one in about 30 seconds during the signup.)
3. Fill in the form: your email address, institution, GitHub username, career stage, intended use, and accept the Terms of Use.
4. Confirm your email by clicking the link we send you. Your GitHub organization invitation is sent automatically once your email is verified.
5. Accept the GitHub organization invitation from your GitHub organizations page.

Your email is added to a low-volume MorphoCloud announcement list (outages, workflow updates, upcoming events).

Instance lifespan: 60 days by default, renewable once to 120 days using /renew.

For instructors or organizers running a short workshop (5 days max) where all participants need simultaneous access.

How to get access:

1. The workshop organizer goes to morphocloud.org, clicks Use MorphoCloud in your workshop, and signs in with their ORCID iD. Once verified, they are added to the WorkshopOrganizers GitHub team.
2. The organizer opens a Workshop Request issue in the MorphoCloud Instances repository and fills in the workshop details (dates, number of participants, instance flavor).
3. Once the MorphoCloud team approves the request, instances are provisioned for each participant — the organizer receives all connection credentials by email and is responsible for distributing them to participants.

Instance lifespan: Set per workshop by the MorphoCloud team.

This is for instructors who want their students to use MorphoCloud routinely as part of their course. The course is set up as a dedicated and private repository only accessible to instructor(s) and the students they invite. Repository is removed 30 days after the course concludes. Instructors can tailor the platform to better align with specific course objectives and actively maintain the course enrollment.

If you are interested, please review the instructions. Questions? Contact us at portal@morphocloud.org.

Once you have access and have accepted your GitHub organization invitation, the User Guide covers day-to-day use:

• Requesting and creating your instance — open an issue and run /create.
• Connecting — web browser (Guacamole) or the TurboVNC client.
• Transferring files — Guacamole drag-and-drop, and scp/sftp/rsync for bulk data.
• Where your data is stored — the MyData volume and what survives deletion.
• Commands — /create, /shelve, /unshelve, /renew, delete, and more.
• Instance lifecycle — running, shelving, expiration, renewal.
• GPU notes & known issues — GPU behavior on JetStream2 and resource availability.

Instructors setting up a course should follow the instructor guide.

All instances include a persistent attached volume (your MyData volume, 100 GB) mounted at /media/volume/MyData. Your entire home directory — Desktop, Documents, Downloads, and all other home folders — is stored on this volume, so files you save anywhere in your home directory survive instance deletion and recreation (details).

When in doubt, start with g3.large. It is the default flavor, covers the majority of SlicerMorph workflows, and is typically the most available. Move up only if you encounter memory or compute limits — see GPU notes & known issues for which flavor to pick.

Note on GPU instances: Performance of 3D Slicer (especially volume rendering) degrades significantly on GPU instances when any dimension of the volume is ≥ 4096 voxels. For such large volumes, consider m3.xl or a large-memory flavor instead — see GPU notes & known issues.

Check availability: JetStream2 resources are shared nationally. Before creating or unshelving an instance, check real-time resource availability to avoid long waits.

For general inquiries send us an email at portal@morphocloud.org.

For instance support, tag @MorphoCloud/morphocloud-admins in your specific issue page and explain what you need help with.

MorphoCloud is supported by the National Science Foundation (DBI/2301405) and the National Institutes of Health (NICHD/HD104435). Infrastructure is provided by JetStream2 (OAC/2005506) and Exosphere (TI/2229642).

If you use MorphoCloud for your research, please cite the platform article and include the following acknowledgment statement.

Citation:

Maga AM and Fillion-Robin J-C. MorphoCloud: Democratizing Access to High-Performance Computing for Morphological Data Analysis. F1000Research 2026, 15:53. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.176328.1

Acknowledgment statement:

This study relied on cyberinfrastructure supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (MorphoCloud: DBI/2301405; JetStream2: OAC/2005506; Exosphere: TI/2229642) and the National Institutes of Health (MorphoCloud: NICHD HD104435).