Medical Imaging News

InnerOptic and Kitware to Develop Needle-Guidance System that Targets Hepatic Tumors

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 -0400

InnerOptic Technology and Kitware are pleased to announce Phase II SBIR funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the development of a needle guidance system for hepatic tumor ablation. The operating room ready system will provide novel 3D visualizations for needle guidance in soft tissues.

Using InnerOptic’s Spotlight™ technology, which was developed during Phase I of this grant, intra-operative ultrasound images will be fused with pre-operative computed tomography (CT) images. The Spotlight system renders opaquely and in sharp detail only the portions of the CT data that are in the vicinity of the ultrasound probe or the needle trajectory. This is analogous to a spotlight on stage: illuminating the scene of interest, while the rest of the stage is transparent and out-of-focus to be less distracting.

During liver lesion ablations and other image-guided procedures, surgeons and

Tom Munnecke: Towards a Federal Health Information Space

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0400

On Tuesday, April 24th, OSEHRA will host Tom Munnecke, one of the world’s leading experts in health information technology, as he presents his observations and lessons learned as one of the original architects of VistA and CHCS, as well as his thoughts on their future evolution.

He will present an architectural conceptual model based on an "Information Space" rather than a "Integrated System." In this model, we approach the federal health information as a large-scale, fine-grained network of information and interactions. He will also discuss some of the unique issues of the massive scale in the federal health care system - how we can use it to our advantage, as well as the pitfalls it brings.

Join us from 12:30-1:45 PM EDT for Towards a Federal Health Information Space. Register with GotoMeeting to reserve your spot today, as space is limited. After registering you will receive a confirmation email containin

Slicer 4.1 Released

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware, in collaboration with the National Association for Medical Image Computing (NA-MIC) and the Slicer community, is happy to announce the release of Slicer 4.1. This release brings a new level of stability to Slicer and new features to enhance its usability and functionality.

Notable changes in this release include the addition of the Extension Manager, which enables Slicer extensions to be downloaded and installed from within Slicer. To support extension contributions from the community, an “extension catalog” server (similar to an app store) is running to host uploaded contributions from Slicer developers. Built on Kitware’s Midas technology, the “extension catalog” makes it easier for the community to search, find, rate, comment, and download relevant extensions.

ITK 4.1.0 Released

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0500

On behalf of the ITK community, Kitware and the ITK team are happy to announce the release of the Insight Toolkit 4.1.0! This release is the first since ITK 4.0.0 and includes a number of improvements and new features. Additionally, this is the first release to deviate from the even-only minor release number, an effect of transitioning to Git.

Notable improvements in this release include better VTK Bridge and WrapITK support, a new deconvolution filtering module with several classes, and a new TimeVaryingBSplineVelocityFieldTransform. There are also enhancements to the Registrationv4 and LevelSetsv4 frameworks, and a new video filtering module that includes a method to use standard filters in a video pipeline. Additionally, InsightApplications (from the ITKApps repository) has also seen a number of updates to ITKv4. <

OSEHRA Announces First Board of Directors

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Kitware is a proud member of the OSEHRA team and is redistributing this release on behalf of the organization.

OSEHRA, the non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating innovation in electronic health record software, today named three industry leaders to its inaugural board of directors.

The Honorable James Peake, MD, Senior Vice President with CGI Group, Inc., Dr. John Halamka, MD, MS, Chief Information Officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Michael O’Neill, Senior Advisor with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Innovation Initiative (VAi2) have each been appointed to OSEHRA’s board of directors. In addition, Lieutenant General (Dr.) Charles Green, Surgeon General of the U.S. Air Force, will serve as Department of Defense liaison to the OSEHRA board. Dr. Peake will s

Kitware Introduces Visomics for Bioinformatics

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Kitware is pleased to introduce “Visomics,” an open-source application for performing biological research pertaining to genomics, protemomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics.

Visomics is built on top of Kitware’s powerful open-source toolkits and is easily configured to support underlying ‘omics applications, which can be customized to meet the particular needs of researchers. Currently in alpha/beta mode, Visomics provides the statistical methods, intuitive visualizations, and pre-existing chemical pathway diagrams that biologists need for the tracking, storage, analysis and evaluation of relationships and behaviors of large numbers of analytes and biomarkers.

Clinical researchers are using currently Visomics to delve deep into the areas of reproductive and perinatal health, cardiovascular disorders and breast cancer. By leveraging Visomics

Kitware Announces Debut of KiwiViewer in Android Market

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Kitware is pleased to announce the release of KiwiViewer in the Android Market. With this release, Android device users can explore scientific and medical datasets in an intuitive, natural manner. In addition to the full functionality of KiwiViewer, this release features several enhancements, including new demos and features. The application supports Android 2.2 and later.

There are new built-in visualization demos, including a brain atlas viewer, a time-series simulation animation, and a 3D image slice plane widget. New file formats are now supported, including polygon and MetaImage. For a complete description of supported file formats, please see the documentation page.

Additionally, the Android release features Kitware, in collaboration with the National Association for Medical Image Computing (NA-MIC) and the Slicer community, is pleased to announce that Slicer 4.0.1 is available for download. Instructions for building Slicer 4.0.1. from the source code are found on the Slicer wiki.

Notable changes in Slicer 4.0.1 include new support for Ubuntu 11.04 and Fedora FC 13, and for DWI tractrography modules on Mac OS X. VTK GPU raycast method support of ATI GPU cards for Mac OS X is also included in this release, as well as major improvements to restoring scenes, which now provides significantly faster speeds.

Additionally, in Slicer 4.0.1, users can now drag-and-drop files, including volumes, meshes, annotations, etc., int

ITK 4.0 is Now Available and Ready for Download!

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Kitware, on behalf of the ITK team, is pleased to announce the release of ITK 4.0.0 and the availability of the binaries, which are now available for download on the ITK download page. This release is the outcome of 18 months of refactoring efforts, generously sponsored by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) with funds provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

New features included in ITK 4.0.0

Kitware Receives $181,700 for 3D Slicer Enhancements

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Kitware has been awarded $181,700 in sub-recipient funding on a grant from the U.S. National Center of Research Resources, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The funding will be used to make enhancements to 3D Slicer, an open-source platform for medical image segmentation, registration, visualization, and analysis. 3D Slicer is funded by grants associated with the National Alliance for Medical Image Computing (NA-MIC) and the Neuroimaging Analysis Center (NAC), and supported by extensive user and developer communities.

NA-MIC) and broader Slicer community, is pleased to announce the release of the Slicer 4.0 binaries. This is a major new release in the Slicer series that focused on perfomance improvements, enhanced robustness, and increased usability.

One of the major features of Slicer 4.0 is the new graphical user interface built with Qt. This new GUI provides a more user-friendly application and increases user efficiency. Additionally, the Slicer core has been refactored and the Python interface has been simplified.

This release also has numerous other enhancements, and the complete list can be found on the Slicer wiki. The updated documentation is also available on t

Wesley Turner Appointed to SPIE Senior Membership

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Dr. Wesley Turner, a technical leader in the medical imaging group at Kitware, was recently elected as a Senior Member of SPIE, an international society for optics and photonics. Dr. Turner has been with Kitware since May 2006 and has contributed his technical expertise and management skills to projects that include the exploitation of CT and MRI patient scans, microscopy, and bioinformatics.

About SPIE
In 1955, the Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) was founded to advance light-based technologies. Each year, the Society organizes 25 major international forums, trade exhibitions, and continuing education programs. SPIE also publishes a number of peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, reference volumes, tutorial texts, and more, which can be accessed through the SPIE Digital Lib

OSEHRA Debuts Weekly Teleconference Tomorrow

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0500

The Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA) will start a weekly teleconference to discuss the current set of OSEHRA software development tools on Wednesday, November 16 from 3:30pm to 4:30pm EST. This first meeting will provide an introduction to the many software development tools that are now available for VistA/M developers from the www.osehra.org website. This includes OSEHRA’s:

Source Code Repository based on Git (http://code.osehra.org/gitweb)
Software Quality Dashboard based on CDash (http://code.osehra.org/CDash/index.php?project=Open+Source+EHR)
Automated Vista/M Manual Pages (http://code.osehra.org/dox)
Code Review Tool based on Gerrit (

In September, Kitware welcomed four new team members and a year-long intern. Megha Pandey and Eric Smith joined the computer vision team, Sankhesh Jhaveri joined the scientific computing team, and Brenda McCormack joined the contracting team. Michael Jeulin-LaGarrigue will be with Kitware for a year while interning with the medical team.

Megha Pandey joined the computer vision group in the Clifton Park office. She holds an M.S. in computer science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a dual B.Tech and M.Tech in electrical engineering and communication and signal processing from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Bombay. Ms. Pandey has research experience from UNC and IIT, Bombay, where she worked on a number of notable projects including indoor scene classification, vision-based marker-less motion capture, moving object segmentation, and an RFID system with

ITKv4 Beta Now Available

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware and the ITK team are pleased to announce the release of ITKv4 Beta. This release includes number of changes resulting from the massive effort for revising, simplifying, and accelerating ITK. While some of the features in the Beta release are still works in progress, they are mature enough for developers to begin using them and provide early feedback on the design and implementation of the code.

Some highlights of this Beta release include an updated license, modularization, new level sets and registration frameworks, improved support for file formats and improved C++ code. The ITK license has been changed to Apache 2.0, which is a more modern, precise and professional license than BSD. Like the BSD license, the Apache 2.0 license still empowers the community to make full use of the toolkit without significant restrictions.

jobs@kitware.com for

Kitware Sponsors MICCAI Society Young Scientist Publication Impact Award

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware commends Dr. Boon Thye Thomas Yeo, who has won the Young Scientist Publication Impact Award from the Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) Society. Sponsored by Kitware, this award rewards scientists who are early in their careers and are shaping the medical image analysis field.

The award recipient was announced by Dr. William Wells, Harvard Professor and MICCAI Board Member, and Dr. Stephen Aylward on Wednesday evening during the annual MICCAI conference’s award ceremony. Dr. Yeo will receive a $1,000 prize for his paper, “Effects of Registration Regularization and Atlas Sharpness on Segmentation Accuracy” from MICCAI 2007. Honorable mentions go out to the runners up, Dr. Kang Li for his paper, “Cell Population Tracking and Lineage Construction with Spatiotemporal Context” from MICCAI 2007 and Dr. Paul M. Novotny for his paper “GPU Based Real-time Instrument Tracking with Three Dimensional Ultrasound&rdquo

Kitware Awarded $300,000 in NIH Research Grants to Fund Advancements in Biomedical Research

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware has been awarded two $150,000 grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop advanced software systems for enhancing digital pathology and remote-access microscopy, continuing Kitware’s longstanding track record of applying open-source systems to solving timely biomedical research challenges.

“Kitware is focused on providing open-source tools for managing tera-scale histology, and creating long-term solutions to current scientific and medical challenges,” said Charles Law, Principal Investigator on these projects. “Whether we’re building new educational tools or research platforms, our software systems will play a critical role in improving future patient care.”

In Phase I of the SBIR grant, "An Open Source Digital Pathology System Supporting Multi-Touch Interaction," Kitware will develop a freely-available, multi-platform, open-source system for processing slide image data for integration of dig

Kitware Team Grows in July

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware welcomed five new employees and one intern in July. Matthew Dawkins, Paul Tunison, and Nick Sullivan joined the computer vision group. Chris Harris joined the scientific visualization team, and Matthew McCormick joined the medical team. Benjamin Long is an intern who will be working on MIDAS for the next year.

Matthew Dawkins joined the computer vision team as an R&D engineer at the Clifton Park office. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. He has previous experience as an intern for Digital Receiver Technology, a Boeing subsidiary, where he assisted in the development of embedded software applications for the protocol engineering department.

Paul Tunison started with Kitware in November 2010 as a computer vision

VolView 3.4 Released

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware is pleased to announce the release of VolView 3.4, featuring several notable enhancements and marking the first open source release of this project. VolView is Kitware’s intuitive, interactive system for volume visualization that allows researchers to quickly explore and analyze complex 3D medical or scientific data on Windows, Mac and Linux computers. VolView is a great example of an end-user application built on top of the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) and the Insight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit (ITK), and has been in development since 1999.

The VolView 3.4 release contains several new features. Paintbrush widgets have been added to allow users to perform manual data segmentation in 2D and 3D. There are also new segmenta

Kitware Continues to Grow in June

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware welcomed three new full-time employees and five interns throughout the month of June. Ilknur Kabul and Joe Snyder joined the medical team, Kyle Lutz joined the scientific visualization team, and five additional interns have joined Kitware for the summer.

Ilknur Kabul joined Kitware as a member of the medical team at the Carrboro office. She is completing her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and holds a master’s degree from Bilkent University, and a bachelor’s degree from Middle East Technical University. Prior to joining Kitware, Ilknur worked as a research assistant for Medical Image Display and Analysis Group (MIDAG), where she researched illustrative rendering techniques for medical imaging and developed model-based texture synthesis approaches for generating anatomical surface and volumetric textures.

Kitware is pleased to announce that it will be providing open-source expertise to the Informatics Applications Group (tiag) in support of the Department of Veteran Affair’s initiative to create a Custodial Agent for an Open Source Electronic Health Record. Visit osehrca.org for more information and to provide feedback.

Kitware Receives Tibbetts Award for STTR Program Excellence

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Kitware was honored with a Tibbetts Award for its Software Toolkit for Image-Guided Surgery (IGSTK) Phase I and II STTRS. The award, which recognizes companies who represent excellence in achieving the mission and goals of SBIR and STTR programs, is named for Roland Tibbetts. Tibbetts is considered the father of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, which he began as an experimental project at the National Science Foundation in the early 1980's.

IGSTK, Kitware's cutting-edge tool for research involving minimally invasive image-guided medical procedures, is being used in investigations into new surgical techniques that may improve surgical accuracy and precision, increase a surgeon’s ability to confidently treat challenging and complex pathologies, decrease surgical trauma, and reduce recovery time for patients.

IGSTK 4.4 Released

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0500

On behalf of the Image-Guided Surgery Toolkit (IGSTK) team, Kitware is pleased to announce the release of IGSTK 4.4. IGSTK is a high-level, component-based framework that provides a common functionality for image-guided surgery applications. The framework is a set of high-level components integrated with low-level open source software libraries and application programming interfaces (API) from hardware vendors.

The new features in the 4.4 release include support for Ascension's 3D Guidance trackers (medSAFE, driveBAY and trakSTAR); PET image readers, spatial object and representation classes; and PET/CT fused image and electromagnetic tracker-guided needle biopsy application examples.

The build instructions can be found on the Kitware public wiki an

Kitware's Cutting-Edge Research Leads To Record Growth and More Jobs

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Kitware announced one of its largest growth periods in the company’s history. Revenue growth from $5.6M in 2005 to a projected $15M in 2010, buoyed by newly awarded research grants and contracts, has extended the company’s immediate hiring needs in both the New York and North Carolina offices. Kitware is expecting to add more than 30 percent to its workforce before the end of 2011.

Kitware’s technology portfolio includes 3D visualization and informatics, scientific databases, quality software process, medical imaging and computer vision. In addition to military groups like Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Kitware often partners with premier organizations such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. National Labs, Harvard, MIT and Stanford. Kitware is also hire

Kitware Offers Free Access to VolView

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Kitware has announced that VolView, a commercial product for exploring and analyzing complex 3D medical or scientific data, will now be available free of charge to researchers around the world.

First developed in 1999 as an intuitive, interactive system for volume visualization, VolView allows users to load and interactively explore datasets using both 2D and 3D display methods. To view a short demonstration, please click here.

Compatible with Windows, Mac or Linux, VolView is capable of volume rendering, maximum intensity projections and oblique reformatting. In addition, VolView can load multiple datasets simultaneously, support creating and applying 2D a

Kitware, Leading US Builder of Open Source Technology and Developer of Advanced Research Solutions, Unveils Plans for the RSNA 2010 Conference

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0500

At RSNA 2010, Kitware will highlight a number of applications and technologies designed to deliver advanced medical imaging solutions based on free and open source software for scientists and engineers. In addition, Kitware will make an announcement in regards to VolView, a biomedical imaging research application that the company says will have a definitive impact on researchers worldwide.

Kitware, Inc. a software services company that builds open-source platforms and develops advanced research solutions, will attend and exhibit at the International RSNA 2010 conference, to take place at the McCormick Place in Chicago from November 28-December 3, 2010. At the conference, Kitware will highlight a number of applications and technologies designed to deliver advanced medical imaging solutions based on free and open source software for scientists and engineers. In addition, Kitware will make an announcement in regards to VolView, a biomedical imaging research applic

Kitware & the NA-MIC Community Announce Alpha Release of 3D Slicer 4.0

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0400

3D Slicer is an open-source (BSD-style license) platform for medical image segmentation, registration, visualization and analysis. It represents a practical integration of innovations from a multitude of fields including medical image analysis, cross-platform software development, collaborative software development and extensible platform design. Kitware has been closely involved in many of these innovations. In particular, 3D Slicer builds upon ITK, VTK, CMake, CDash, CTK and MIDAS.

Slicer is funded by grants associated with the National Alliance for Medical Image Computing (NA-MIC) and the Neuroimaging Analysis Center (NAC) and has an extensive community behind it. The lead institute for these multi-institutional centers is Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH). Other funded participants include the University of Utah, GE Corporate Research, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Georgia Tech, Johns Hopkins, MIND Institute, MIT, MGH, UCLA, and many others.

To date, 3D Slicer contai

Kitware Announces Opening of European Office

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Lyon office allows the Company to continue its expansion
into European markets and better service its current
European customers and collaborators

CLIFTON PARK, NY – October 25, 2010 – Kitware, a software services company that builds open-source platforms and develops advanced research solutions, today announced the opening of its European Office Kitware SAS. Located in Lyon, France, the office will be headed by Julien Jomier, a current Kitware U.S. employee with expertise in software process, medical ima

Kitware Tapped by National Alliance for Medical Image Computing to Continue Development of its Advanced Biomedical Imaging Toolkit

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware, developers of open source and advanced research solutions, today announced the renewal of a contract with the National Alliance for Medical Image Computing (NA-MIC) to continue with its development of the NA-MIC Kit, a high-quality software for solving medical image analysis and visualization challenges in bio-medical research. In addition, Kitware has been charged by NA-MIC with assisting in traumatic brain injury research through the analysis of MRI longitudinal studies.

One of seven National Centers for Biomedical Computing (NCBC), NA-MIC's focus is to convert scientific advances within biomedical imaging into open-source resources to develop advanced software tools. In 2004, Kitware was contracted by NA-MIC to develop the original Kit, a scalable, free open-source software system used by clinicians and biomedical researchers to mine large quantities of imaging data and use advanced computational tools such as longitudinal and statistical analysis to identify unique patient data and rel

VTK 5.6.1 Released

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware is pleased to announce the release of VTK 5.6.1, a patch release over 5.6.0 with a small set of improvements.

VTK now includes NetCDF 4.1.1 allowing users to take advantage of the latest enhancements to NetCDF. Additionally, the C++ version of the library is also included. A new file format, MPAS, has been added; it is a netcdf-based reader for ocean and atmosphere datasets.

Charts have significant improvements in axes layout and the ability to display multiple data series (up to four) in the same plot. Initial support for linked selection has been added to the charts in VTK and ParaView. Support for alpha blending in parallel coordinate plots has also been added.

We've cleaned up VTK's build and install rules so that developers don't have to worry about 'rpath' anymore.

Additionally, "make install" has been vastly improved on all platforms.

As always, we value your feedback. Please report any issues on the

Kitware Ranks No. 1655 on the 2010 Inc. 5000 with Three-Year Sales Growth of 172%

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Inc. magazine today ranked Kitware NO. 1655 on its fourth annual Inc. 5000, an exclusive ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. The list represents the most comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy—America’s independent-minded entrepreneurs. Music website Pandora, convenience store chain 7-Eleven, Brooklyn Brewery, and Radio Flyer, maker of the iconic children’s red wagon, are among the prominent brands featured on this year’s list.

“The leaders of the companies on this year’s Inc. 5000 have figured out how to grow their businesses during the longest recession since the Great Depression,” said Inc. president Bob LaPointe. “The 2010 Inc. 5000 showcases a particularly hardy group of entrepreneurs.”

Kitware, Inc. is a leader in the creation and support of open- source software

Kitware Welcomes Nine New Employees, Looking to Hire More

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware welcomes several new employees to the team:

Jacob Becker

Jacob joined Kitware's Computer Vision Group in October 2009 as an R&D Engineer. Jacob received his B.S. in Computer Science and Archaeology from the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse (UW-L) in 2001 and his M.S. in Computer Science from RPI in 2009. While at RPI he researched aligning a 2D image to a 3D model and filling in holes in LiDAR data using evidence provided by a single aligned 2D image.

Aasish Chaudhary

Aashish joined Kitware's Scientific Computing Group in October 2009 as an R&D Engineer. Aashish received his B.S. (Honors) in Mechanical Engineering from Devhi Ahilya University (India) in 2000 and his M.S. in Industrial Engineering with minor in Computer Science from Iowa State University. His thesis work involved researching, design

Kitware Organizing MICCAI Workshop on Systems and Architectures for Computer Assisted Interventions

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware is co-organizing a workshop on Systems and Architectures for Computer Assisted Interventions at MICCAI 2010. The goal of this workshop is to establish a forum for discussing open interfaces, architectures, interoperability, and standards for the development of computer assisted intervention systems.

Modularization of surgical assist systems has become a topic of growing importance due to the increasing complexity of system components. Future systems will have to depend on reliable components and frameworks, which are used as building blocks to realize the desired functionality. To achieve modularization, standards will be key, as they allow for cross-vendor interoperability. As such, this workshop will focus primarily on modularization and standardization of CAS systems and frameworks and will include strong participation

Stephen Aylward to speak at the "From MICCAI Algorithms to Clinical Translational Tools: The NA-MIC Platform" Tutorial

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0400

MICCAI offers a window into the latest scientific achievements in medical image computing and computer assisted interventions which will lead to the next generation of technological breakthroughs for improved clinical care. A critical step to maximize the long-term positive impact of MICCAI cutting-edge algorithms is to enable their deployment, validation and concrete use by the clinical research community for whom they were developed.

For the past six years, the National Alliance for Medical Image Computing (NA-MIC), one of the seven National Centers for Biomedical Computing (NCBC), part of the NIH Roadmap for medical research, has focused its efforts on the conversion of scientific advances from the biomedical imaging community into open-source resources for users and developers, in order to improve the availability and deployment of advanced software tools on a national and international scale.

The objective of the tutorial is to introduce the challen

Kitware Awarded NIH Grant to Improve Lesion Biopsy Using PET-CT Imaging

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware has received a one-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) totaling $228,458 to improve the clinical effectiveness of liver lesion biopsy using PET-CT imaging. The project will extend the open source Image Guided Surgery Toolkit (IGSTK) to enable the fusion of motion corrected PET images with CT images for liver lesion biopsy.

The main focus of the project will be the development of a robust respiratory motion correction technique aimed at producing more effective PET-CT guided biopsies. Kitware and its team of researchers will develop a respiratory motion correction algorithm to help develop a better technique, which decreases errors in imaging caused by artifacts like organ sliding which can occur just from the natural respiration process.

''While PET imaging can localize malignancies in tumors that do not have a CT correlate, the diagnostic benefit is often gravely affected by basic respiratory motion,'' said Dr. Andinet Enquobahrie, tech

Kitware Receives $1.07 Million in Stimulus Funds to Further Innovation in the Renowned Insight Toolkit (ITK)

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware today announced it has received a $1.07 million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to improve the Insight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit (ITK). A dynamic, self-sustaining, cross-platform, and open source application development framework, ITK is used freely in a multitude of commercial and non-commercial image segmentation and registration programs. Kitware's proposal will go towards lowering the learning curve for researchers and developers, and incorporating innovative high-performance computing technologies, while maintaining the toolkit's versatility and industry-leading capabilities.

Created with funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, with program management provided by the National Library of Medicine, ITK is an established foundation for medical imaging research and the distribution of advanced imaging solutions. Kitware, one of the original ITK development teamss 10 years ago, is now one of the six institutes charged with revising ITK'

ITK Has Moved to Git!

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0400

We're pleased to announce the completion of the ITK repository conversion from CVS to Git. The CVS repositories for Insight and InsightApplications have been permanently frozen. Development of ITK is now officially hosted by Git. The official repository URLs are:

One may also browse the repositories online via gitweb: http://itk.org/gitweb

See the ITK Git wiki page for further instructions: http://www.itk.org/Wiki/ITK/Git

ITK 3.20 Now Available

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0400

We are pleased to announce the release of ITK 3.20. Source files and download instructions are available at
http://itk.org/ITK/resources/software.html

The list of new files can be found at: http://www.itk.org/Wiki/ITK_Release_3.20

The list of changed files can be found at: http://www.itk.org/Wiki/ITK_Release_3.20_Changed_From_Previous

Please let us know if you find any problems.

A New Approach to Quantifying Risk of Developing Lung Cancer is published in Academic Radiology

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Groundbreaking study finds a strong association between airway bifurcation CT densities, loss of lung function and lung cancer risk

CLIFTON PARK, NY - June 28, 2010 - Kitware announces today the first published report of a new and quantitative method for measuring lung cancer risk within the July issue of Academic Radiology. The paper provides a multi-disciplinary scientific literature rationale and preliminary study data showing that increased calcification at upper airway bifurcations, when combined with pulmonary function test scores, can be used to estimate an individual's risk of developing lung cancer.

The new approach, described within the paper "A Quantitative Method for Estimating Individual Lung Cancer Risk," utilizes a low dose Computed Tomography (CT) scan and a pulmonary function test to measure lung damage and cancer risk. The use of two commonly available clinical tests allows the new approach to be independently studied at most healthcare

Second European IGSTK User Group Meeting

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400

The second European IGSTK user group meeting was held on June 22, 2010, in Geneva, Switzerland. The meeting was held the evening before the beginning of the Computer Aided Radiology and Surgery (CARS) conference. There were about 15 attendees representing different institutions worldwide and the seven speakers discussed their work with IGSTK and related software. The applications presented included robotically assisted neurosurgery, cone-beam CT guided head and neck surgery, and liver surgery. The schedule and presentations can be seen on the IGSTK Wiki.

Kitware and Lung Cancer Alliance Announce the First Publicly Available Lung Cancer Database Created Through Patient Data Donations

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Patients participated in the Give A Scan pilot program to collect and contribute their CT image datasets and patient history records to an open image archive; the data is now freely downloadable to help research efforts geared toward understanding, detecting and treating lung cancer

CLIFTON PARK, NY - June 8, 2010 - Kitware and Lung Cancer Alliance announce the release of the first group of lung cancer patient records now publicly available for download at GiveAScan.org.

This open image archive represents the successful completion of a pilot project to determine the feasibility of a patient donated database to accelerate medical research. This initial nine patient database includes over 1 GB of radiological imaging studies including Computed Tomography (CT) scans, volunteered by patients to accelerate lung cancer research including screening, computer

ITK 3.18 Now Available for Ubuntu 10.04

Wed, 05 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Thanks to Dr. Paul Novotny ITK 3.18 is now available for Ubuntu 10.04. Ubuntu 10.04 (codenamed the Lucid Lynx) is the latest release of the Ubuntu operating system. As always this Ubuntu packaging includes the WrapITK module for using ITK with Python.

Currently, Dr. Novotny creates his own test packages and the developers of the Vascular Modeling Toolkit (vmtk.org) who are one of his largest user bases of ITK/Ubuntu packages help test the software. Kitware would like to thank Dr. Novotny for his work on this package. Such volunteer acts allow our toolkits to be more easily adopted by a broad set of users, and we are greatly appreciative of these types of efforts.

If you are interested in installing the ITK 3.18 Ubuntu package please visit: http://paulnovo.org/repository. If you are interested in helping Dr. Novotny test ITK

Adopt A Bug 2.0

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400

The ITK development team is hosting another bugathon with Adopt-A-Bug 2.0. Users can volunteer to adopt-a-bug. In doing so you agree to either fix the bug, or pester/motivate/encourage developers to fix the bug.

Bug adopters will receive full ITK-developer status, including:

CVS write access;
MANTIS tracker developer status;
and recognition in the ITK Wiki.

Visit the ITK Wiki for more information.

ITK 3.18 Now Available

Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400

ITK 3.18 is now available for download. The main changes in this release include:

Improvements in implementation of mathematical traits, particularly for fast rounding, contributed by Brad Lowenkamp and Tom Vercauteren.
Addition of classes for managing internationalization of strings, contributed by Tom Vercauteren.
Updated the version of NrrdIO library in Utilities, thanks to Gordon Kindlmann and Michel Audette.
Fixed shadowing warnings reported by gcc.
Recently added classes were included in the Wrapping, thanks to Gaetan Lehmann.
Improved support for Symmetric Tensor operations, thanks to Luke Bloy.
Improved behavior of the Object Factories, thanks to Brad Lowenkamp.
Improved testing for Discrete Gaussian derivative fi

VTK 5.6

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware is planning to release VTK 5.6 this spring. Since the previous release, 270 new C++ classes have been added. The new features in VTK include improved support for line charts and bar charts that don't depend on Qt. With this release VTK provides a new text analysis module. Another major improvement is support for parallel rendering.

This release also includes changes that improve performance. VTK can now locate and insert non-uniformly distributed points three times faster than the previous version.

We've improved GPU support in VTK. The vtkGPUVolumeRayCastMapper has been migrated from VTKEdge to VTK. VTK 5.6 contains a GPU-based real time Line Integral Convolution (LIC) with enhanced image contrast and LIC + geometry compositing for dense vector field / flow visualization. These are just the highlights. For a complete list of changes, visit the VTK Wiki and search "VTK 5.6 Release Planning."

Kitware Announces the VTK Journal

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Recently the VTK community has established an on-line VTK Journal. Like its sister, the Insight Journal, the VTK Journal supports open access publication, open data and open source to foster the growth of Open Science. We encourage you to visit and contribute articles and/or reviews to the VTK Journal.

Currently there are two articles in the Journal, with two more pending final publication. Once these two articles go live later today, the VTK users and developers lists will receive an automated email notifying the community of their availability. This is your cue to review and/or try out the submissions. This process will continue for future article submissions.

Kitware's open access journals are built on the MIDAS multimedia and data publication system. MIDAS, which is now an open source technology, is a general framework on which Kitware builds cu

Kitware Wins Phase I NLM SBIR for Biomedical Research

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Kitware has been awarded a Phase I SBIR by the National Library of Medicine to develop a flexible information visualization and analysis platform for biomedical research. This contracted effort will develop tools in support of ‘omics (genomics, proteomics, metabalomics) research by enabling the visualization of interrelated data in publicly available databases. Kitware is teamed with Michelle Williams from the University of Washington and Thomas O’Connell from the University of North Carolina.

Kitware is Awarded NAMIC Qt Supplement for Biomedical Computing

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Kitware has been awarded a two year, approximately $350K, supplement to the NAMIC National Center for Biomedical Computing project. The goal of the project is to rewrite the Slicer KWWidgets-based GUI with Qt. Jean-Christophe Fillion-Robin, Julien Finet and Sébastien Barré will be the primary implementers of this technology.

Kitware Wins Phase I NCRR SBIR for DECT Angiography Bone Removal

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500

This Phase I SBIR awarded by the National Center for Research Resources will develop tools for dual energy segmentation and removal of bone from the vicinity of the carotid arteries. This technology will enable contrast enhanced angiography studies where the bone and vasculature anatomy can be confounded for a single energy CT scan. Kitware is teamed with Sandy Napel of Stanford University on this effort.

2nd Biomedical Visualization Contest Winners

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware held its 2nd Annual Contest to find the best biomedical visualization made using the freely-available, open-source Visualization Toolkit and the Insight Registration and Segmentation Toolkit.

Judging for this contest was completed in a secure online environment and the winners were announced at 12th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, held September 20 - 24, 2009 in London, England.

This year's submissions employed the following software applications in creating their contest submissions: caBIG-XIP, 3D Slicer, Osirix<

ITK 3.16 Released

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0400

ITK 3.16 was released on September 15, 2009. The main changes in this release include the continued addition of classes for managing labeled images contributed on an Insight Journal article by G. Lehmann. These added classes were the remaining components of a 70+ class label map morphology module. These classes provide for the efficient representation of label maps and for conversion between current ITK label images and the efficient storage format. Details are available from "Label Object Representation and Manipulation with ITK", which can be read in the January Source or on the Insight Journal (http://hdl.handle.net/1926/584). These new classes can be found in the Code/Review Directory and can be enabled by setting the CMake variable

Kitware to Host 2nd Annual Visualization Contest at MICCAI 2009

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware is hosting its 2nd Annual Best Biomedical Visualization Contest in conjunction with MICCAI 2009, the 12th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, which will be held in London from September 20-24.

The contest, which is open to the public, is being hosted at: public.kitware.com/ImageVote. Users may submit visualizations and cast votes after registering, for free, at the contest website. Visualizations may be charts, graphs, photographs, or renderings from the biomedical field.

All images must have been produced by programs that use ITK and/or VTK. To that effect we've generated a list of applications on the contest website and kitware.com which use ITK and VTK and are therefore e

MIDAS 2.2 Released

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400

MIDAS, Kitware's digital archiving and distributed processing system, has seen its second major release in a year. MIDAS collects, manages and process digital media. Among the new features added are:

• Better policies management
• Improved navigation
• Faster database access and rendering
• New DICOM metadata extraction and search
• Improved security for private collections
• Faster search
• LDAP support
• Improved image gallery
• Initial support for custom workflow
• New web services API
• Redesigned grid computing management

Kitware's public instance of MIDAS is available at http://insight-journal.org/midas, and is host to hundreds of freely available scientific and medical datasets.

For more information about MIDAS and to downl

IGSTK European User's Meeting

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400

The IGSTK development team hosted a European User's meeting at the Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery conference in Berlin, Germany on June 23, 2009. The invitation only meeting drew 35 participants from 11 countries. The meeting started with a short introduction and update on new developments in the 4.2 release.

This was followed by presentations on IGSTK-based applications from the user community. The following members of the user community presented:

Silesian University of Technology, Biomedical Division, Poland
Medizinische Universität Innsbruck, Austria
ICCAS, University of Leipzig, Germany
Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto, Canada
University Hospital of Geneva, Switzerland (OsiriX)
SINTEF, Department of Medical Te

VolView 3.2 Released

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Kitware is pleased to announce the release of VolView 3.2. This release is includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

Enhancements:
• VolView now interfaces to the Open Source Lesion Sizing Toolkit. Through this interface, users are able to load a lung data set, use the VolView cropping planes to define a Volume of Interest, and then set a seed to get a segmentation of a lung nodule and an estimate of nodule volume.
• We improved the usability of changing between Pan/Slice/Zoom.
• Measurements can now be "locked" to a slice. In VolView 3.0 Beta, 2D measurements "floated" and were always interpreted in the context of the currently visible slice. In VolView 3.2, you can switch between this behavior and having them only associated with and visible on a singl

IGSTK 4.2 Released

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

IGSTK 4.2 was released on June 20, 2009; this release is now available for download from the IGSTK website. This release contains the following new features:

Video handling component (VideoImager)
An integrated framework for tracking data acquisition and pivot calibration for surgical tools
OpenIGTLink support
A Scene Graph visualization framework
Several new examples demonstrating MicronTracker, OpenIGTLink support, video imager components and other tools.
Other miscellaneous bug fixes

For building instructions, please visit the IGSTK Wiki and search for "How to build IGSTK". Or click here: http://

VTK 5.4.2 Released

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400

The VTK 5.4.2 patch was released on June 4, 2009; this release is now available for download from the VTK website. A full list of changes is available through the VTK user's mailing list archives. Included in this release are the following:

GUISupport/Qt/QVTKWidget.cxx: Instead of deleting timers immediately, mark them for deletion next time the event loop is entered.
Hybrid/vtkAxesActor.cxx: When a user transform is applied to vtkAxesActor, make sure the axis labels are translated with the axes
Infovis/vtkCommunity2DLayoutStrategy.cxx: Fix a memory leak
IO/vtkFLUENTReader.cxx: Bug fixes courtesy of Terry Jordan.

The first set of changes is necessary because for some reason this reader never supplied ParaView with its number of cells.

The second set of changes is necessary because it seems that we've either encountered

ITK 3.14 Released

Thu, 28 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

ITK 3.14 was released on May 28, 2009. The main changes in this release include the addition of classes contributed to the Insight Journal for performing:

Additional color map functors. Based on an Insight Journal article by N. Tustison, H. Zhang, G. Lehmann, P. Yushkevich, and J. Gee, these classes provide a framework for converting intensity-valued images to user-defined RGB colormap images. Along with the framework, the classes also include several colormaps that can be readily applied for visualization of images, or adapted to generate user desired colormaps. Details are available from "Meeting Andy Warhol Somewhere Over the Rainbow: RGB Colormapping and ITK", which can be read in the January Source or on the Insight Journal (http://hdl.handle.net/1926/1452).
Direct FFT-based sinogram to image tom

Kitware Excels on NIH Proposal

Mon, 04 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

Neurosurgical navigation systems have reduced the risk of complications from surgery and have allowed surgeons to remove tumors that were once considered inoperable. However, many techniques used by neurosurgical navigation systems to align pre- and intra-operative images are inaccurate when tissue deformations occur. Deformations commonly arise from tumor resection, gravitational effects on the organ, and the use of hyperosmotic drugs. Deformable intra-operative image registration remains a significant challenge for neurosurgical guidance.

In an NIH R01 grant proposal, "Image Registration for Ultrasound-Based Neurosurgical Navigation", submitted alongside Dr. William Wells from Brigham and Women's Hospital, Kitware proposed two new methods for registering preoperative MRI with intra-operative 3D ultrasound data during craniotomies for brain tumor resection.

The proposed methods will be delivered as part of an extensible "NeuralNav" toolkit that provides a common API for fetching tracker da

ITK 3.12 Released

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

ITK 3.12 was released on March 3, 2009. The main changes in this release include the addition of classes contributed to the Insight Journal for performing:

certain specific Mathematical Morphology operations,
robust automatic thresholding,
computation of shape features such as tubularness, sheetness and blobiness, and
a more flexible flood filled iterator.

Further improvements were made for providing conistent management of image directions.

Support for image streaming on the writers was made functional thanks to the help of Brad Lowekamp. More information on image streaming support can be found in Bradley Lowenkamp's article published in the April 2009 Source.

Coding style was fixed across the toolkit by taking advantage of the KWStyle automatic style checker tool. From hereafter coding style will be verified at the moment of committin

VTK 5.4 Released

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0400

VTK 5.4 was released on March 26, 2009; this release is now available for download from the VTK website. A full list of changes is available through the VTK user’s mailing list archives. The major changes in this release are as follows:

The freetype font engine was updated to v2.3.7
Two new views were added: TreeRingView & IcicleView
The Geovis kit is now included with VTK

More information about VTK 5.4 can be found on vtk.org.

3-D Snapshots of Eyes Reveal Details of Age-Related Blindness

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Colleen Morrison
The Optical Society
202.416.1437
cmorri@osa.org

Devin Powell
American Institute of Physics
301.209.3099
dpowell@aip.org

Interactive Science Publishing Helps Researchers Examine the Problems of Age-Related Macular Degeneration in Unprecedented Detail

WASHINGTON, March 19- To get a better look at the abnormalities that cause age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of vision loss in Americans and Europeans over 50, the research groups of James Fujimoto at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and collaborators Jay Duker of the Tufts University School of Medicine, and Joel Schuman of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have created ultra-detailed 3-D images of the eyes of more than 2,000 people

VolView 3.0 Released

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Kitware is pleased to announce the release of VolView 3.0. VolView is an intuitive, interactive system for volume visualization that allows researchers to quickly explore and analyze complex 3D medical or scientific data on Windows, Mac and Linux computers. Users can easily load and interactively explore datasets using 2D and 3D display methods and tools. 3D tools include volume rendering, maximum intensity projections, and oblique reformatting. The ability to save an entire visualization session allows users to easily stop and start sessions. Advanced users can perform custom data processing using a simple plug-in API.

This release is a major upgrade of the VolView platform with several new capabilities including:

A simplified user interface including a toolbar for quick access to commonly used tools
Accelerated volume rendering including GPU acceleration on the Nvidia platform
NDI Chooses IGSTK for Medical Research

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Northern Digital Inc. (NDI), a world-leader in 3D measurement technology for medical, industrial and research applications utilized the Image-Guided Surgery Toolkit (IGSTK) and Slicer to demonstrate how open source software can be used to quickly develop medical research applications. NDI demonstrated their Aurora System, which integrates IGSTK and Slicer with NDI technology, at the IGSTK User Group Meeting held in conjunction with SPIE 2009. NDI’s Aurora System uses and 18-gauge needle containing a tiny electromagnetic sensor at its tip; utilizing the Aurora System researchers are able to view the needle on a diagnostic image, updated in real-time as it is manipulated to quickly and accurately target a lesion represented in an anatomical phantom.

IGSTK, an open source software toolkit developed by Kitware in collaboration with ISIS

IGSTK User Group Meeting

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The first ever IGSTK User Group Meeting took place at the SPIE Medical Imaging conference in Orlando, Florida on February 7, 2009. Due to space constraints, the meeting was invitation only. The morning session was dedicated to annual review.

During this session, IGSTK core developers presented their work that is incorporated in the new release: IGSTK 4.0. This was followed by an application demo by Jeff Stanley from NDI. In the afternoon session, participants presented applications developed using IGSTK. The applications included an image-guided surgical drill, intraoperative cone-Beam CT for guidance of head and neck surgery, and OpenIGTLink, which integrates Slicer and IGSTK to enable multimodal neuronavigation in neurosurgery and ultrasound-based intervention.

Participants were from:

• Kitware, Inc., Clifton Park, NY
• Imaging Science and Information Systems (ISIS) Center at Georgetown University, Washington DC.
• Harvard University Medical School, Surgic
IGSTK 4.0 Released

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The IGSTK development team released IGSTK 4.0 on February 7, 2009. This release includes:
- Refactored transform classes (affine transform, perspective transform)
- Support for ascension tracker (3D guidance medSafe)
- Reslicing (orthogonal and oblique modes; manual and automatic reslicing)
- Several example applications (navigator, tracker measurement volume viewer, tracker configuration)
- Miscellaneous bug fixes
VTK 5.2.1 Released

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The VTK 5.2.1 patch release is now available for download from the VTK web site. A full list of changes from 5.2.0 to 5.2.1 is available through the VTK user’s mailing list archives.

The VTK 5.4 release is slated for Summer 2009. To find out about the new features being implemented in VTK 5.4, visit the VTK Wiki and search for “VTK 5.4 Release Planning”.
ITK 3.10 Released

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0500

ITK 3.10 was released on November 4, 2008. The major changes in this release include:
- Implementation of kernel-base filters contributed by Richard Beare and Gaetan Lehmann. (http://hdl.handle.net/1926/555). In particular applied to Mathematical Morphology, and filters that can be computed using moving histograms, such as Mean, Standard Deviation and Rank.
- Gaussian derivative operators contributed by Ivan Macia (http://hdl.handle.net/1926/1290). This contribution includes methods for computing Hessians and their eigen values at given points in an image.
- Mesh processing filters for surfaces using the QuadEdge mesh representation, contributed by Arnaud Gelas, Alexander Gouaillard, and Sean Megason (http://hdl.handle.net/1926/1495).
- Parameterization of discrete surfaces contributed by Arnaud Gelas and Alexander Go
Kitware, OSA release software for Interactive Scientific Publishing

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Technology Enables Researchers to Interact with Author Data

Clifton Park, NY October 29 – Kitware is pleased to announce the launch of OSA’s Interactive Science Publishing (ISP) system. ISP is the first open-access scientific publication system that allows authors to distribute imaging datasets and advanced visualizations over the Internet for interactive display. The dissemination of information and data using novel software technology and systems falls directly in line with Kitware’s organizational goals and its efforts to advance publishing systems for open science. OSA ISP is a unique publishing system that enables researchers to create active publications supporting direct interaction with the data referred to in the publication.

“Kitware is delighted to have partnered with the Optical Society of America and the National Library of Medicine to develop and la
ITK 3.6 Released

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0400

ITK 3.6 was released on April 15, 2008. The main changes in this release relate to improvements of the image registration framework. In particular, a set of multi-threaded image metric implementations have been added to the Code/ Review directory. Stephen Aylward led the team that developed these new classes. Team members included Brad Davis, Sebastién Barré and Matt Turek. Very valuable feedback was provided by Jim Miller (GE), Serdar Balci (MIT) and Golina Polland (MIT).

The registration framework was also revised in order to:
- Provide correct management of Oriented Images
- Reduce memory requirements of BSpline deformable registration
- Reduce memory requirements of Mattes Mutual Information image metric
- Add nightly testing for 3D image registration cases
There were a limited number of classes added to the Code/ Review directory.

In particular:
- Image Projection Filters
- Helper classes for profi
IGSTK 3.0 Released

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0500

IGSTK (The Image Guided Surgery Toolkit) developed in collaboration between the ISIS Center at Georgetown University and Kitware released its version 3.0 on February 15. The new release was demonstrated at the SPIE Medical Imaging conference in San Diego, CA.

The IGSTK 3.0 release is available for download from the Kitware Wiki: http://public.kitware.com/IGSTKWIKI/index.php/Download_IGSTK. It is also available through CVS; the tag is IGSTK-3-0. This release includes several miscellaneous bug fixes and the following new features:
- View and Tracker classes refactoring
- QT and FLTK widget classes for graphical user interface
- Support for MicronTracker from Claron Technology
- Surgical Coordinate System support classes
VTK Patch Release

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

The VTK 5.0.4 patch release was announced on January 22, 2008. Changes from 5.0.3 to 5.0.4 are listed below. We are planning to create the VTK-5-2 branch in CVS soon in preparation for the (upcoming) release of VTK 5.2.
- XML precision fix
- Suppress deprecation warnings when using cl with Unix Makefiles generator
- Java weak reference issue
- Use vtkIdType instead of int for correct 64-bit id builds
- Fixed and simplified vtkOpenGLExtensionManager and updated OpenGL header files
- Remove legacy include of GL/glaux.h
- Add static method VTKTypeID and merge long long bug fix in vtkTypeTraits.h
- Fix incorrect file names in the vtk*Kit.cmake files
- Replace MPProcessors() for better Mac OSX 64-bit compatibility
- Selected Utilities/kwsys/SystemTools.cxx fixes for KWWidgets file browser dialog
- Fix problems when multiple observers invoke further events recursively on the same object