Dear 3D Slicer community,
We need your input! We would like community feedback on our plans to create an enhanced version of the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) that includes the image segmentation, registration and analysis capabilities of the Insight Toolkit (ITK). This combination of popular open source packages would simplify research and development of scientific applications in C++, Python, and JavaScript. It would also bring extensive image analysis capabilities to ParaView and other VTK-based applications.
If you are willing, we would greatly appreciate it if you would complete this 10 question survey:
Please provide your feedback by Tuesday, September 15, 5pm ET.
Background:
VTK and ITK are already used together in many C++, Python, and JavaScript scientific applications such as 3D Slicer, Osirix, ParaView Glance, and ITKWidgets. These applications demonstrate the power of combining visualization and image analysis algorithms, particularly when building models from image data for simulations, applying interactive segmentation techniques, or visualizing image registration results. However, VTK and ITK use different data processing pipelines, use different coordinate systems, and support different data structures and file formats. These differences confound the development of integrated applications: inducing hard-to-find errors and requiring re-implementation of data conversion methods.
As we formulate a plan to integrate ITK into VTK, we would like feedback from the community, so that our work is guided by their current and future needs and desires.
Thank you and best regards,
– Kitware Developers