Ubuntu Manpage: insighttoolkit - imaging toolkit for segmentation and registration

Provided by: libinsighttoolkit3-dev_3.20.1+git20120521-6build1_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.