Ubuntu Manpage: insighttoolkit - imaging toolkit for segmentation and registration

Provided by: libinsighttoolkit4-dev_4.5.0-3_amd64

NAME

       insighttoolkit - imaging toolkit for segmentation and registration

DESCRIPTION

This manual page briefly documents the Insight Toolkit (ITK).

ITK is an open-source software toolkit for performing registration and segmentation.
Segmentation is the process of identifying and classifying data found in a digitally
sampled representation. Typically the sampled representation is an image acquired from
such medical instrumentation as CT or MRI scanners. Registration is the task of aligning
or developing correspondences between data. For example, in the medical environment, a CT
scan may be aligned with a MRI scan in order to combine the information contained in both.

ITK is implemented in C++. In addition, an automated wrapping process generates interfaces
between C++ and interpreted programming languages such as Tcl, Java, and Python. This
enables developers to create software using a variety of programming languages. ITK's C++
implementation style is referred to as generic programming. Such C++ templating means that
the code is highly efficient, and that the many software problems are discovered at
compile-time, rather than at run-time during program execution.

Because ITK is an open-source project, developers from around the world can use, debug,
maintain, and extend the software. ITK uses a model of software development referred to as
Extreme Programming. Extreme Programming collapses the usual software creation methodology
into a simultaneous and iterative process of design-implement-test-release. The key
features of Extreme Programming are communication and testing. Communication among the
members of the ITK community is what helps manage the rapid evolution of the software.
Testing is what keeps the software stable. In ITK, an extensive testing process is in
place that measures the quality on a daily basis.

HISTORY

       In 1999 the US National Library of Medicine [http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nlmhome.html]  of  the
       National  Institutes  of  Health  awarded  a three-year contract to develop an open-source
       registration and segmentation toolkit, which eventually came to be known  as  the  Insight
       Toolkit  (ITK). The primary purpose of the project is to support the Visible Human Project
       [http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/visible_human.html] by providing  software  tools
       to  process  and  work with the project data. ITK's NLM Project Manager was Dr. Terry Yoo,
       who coordinated the six prime contractors  who  made  up  the  Insight  consortium.  These
       consortium members included the three commercial partners GE Corporate R&D, Kitware, Inc.,
       and MathSoft (the company name  is  now  Insightful);  and  the  three  academic  partners
       University  of  North  Carolina  (UNC),  University  of  Tennessee (UT), and University of
       Pennsylvania (UPenn).  The Principle Investigators for these partners were,  respectively,
       Bill  Lorensen at GE CRD, Will Schroeder at Kitware, Vikram Chalana at Insightful, Stephen
       Aylward with Luis Ibanez at UNC (Luis is now at Kitware), Ross Whitaker with Josh Cates at
       UT  (both  now at Utah), and Dimitri Metaxas at UPenn. In addition, several subcontractors
       rounded out the consortium including Peter Raitu at Brigham  &  Women's  Hospital,  Celina
       Imielinska  and  Pat  Molholt  at  Columbia  University, Jim Gee at UPenn's Grasp Lab, and
       George Stetton at University of Pittsburgh.

LICENSE

       ITK       is       released       under       a       BSD-style       license.         See
       /usr/share/doc/libinsighttoolkitX.Y/copyright for the full text.

API REFERENCE

       The API documentation is available in HTML generated by Doxygen, in the insighttoolkit-doc
       package.

MAILING LIST

       Join   the    community    by    subscribing    to    the    ITK    mailing    lists    at
       http://www.itk.org/HTML/MailingLists.htm.

AUTHORS

       The  Insight  Segmentation  and  Registration Toolkit is developed by the Insight Software
       Consortium and the ITK community.