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Kitware has just announced the newest version of their image processing toolkit ITK, version 4.0.  After an extensive 18 months of work with funding from ARRA and the National Library of Medicine, the new version is finally available.

New features included in ITK 4.0.0 include modularization, a simplified accessibility layer called “SimpleITK,” new frameworks for registration and level setting, a newly-refactored finite element (FEM) framework, video processing support, updated DICOM support based on GDCM 2.0, and improved support for large microscopy images above 4 GB.

via Kitware – News: ITK 4.0 is Now Available and Ready for Download!.

Science itk, kitware

My Favorite visualization tool ParaView has just hit v3.12, adding in new client-server communication code, better plugin support, and (what I think is the neatest feature) Streaming Visuals.

ParaView 3.12.0 includes updates to the streaming framework at Los Alamos National Lab (LANL). The multi-resolution streaming view now automatically adjusts resolution to match the projected image size. Moreover, VTK filters can now modify meta-information, so they can modify the data while still allowing the streaming framework to cull and prioritize pieces.

I’ve been watching this feature steadily for the last 2 years or so, and I’m so excited that it’s finally come to the main distribution!  Go download it now!

via Kitware – News: ParaView 3.12.0 is Now Available!.

Science kitware, paraview, software

If you happen to be in Rhode Island this week for IEEE VisWeek, flag down a Kitware developer and check out their latest foray into OpenGL ES 2.0 support with “VES”.  Already at the core of their iPad app “KiwiViewer”, they’ve been busily working on it adding lots of features.

And so, here we are, iterating on our code at high speed to prepare demos for VisWeek. Last week I added support for 2D text annotations using VTK’s freetype classes. The annotations can be anchored to 3D points on a mesh, allowing for updated annotation positions as the camera moves around the scene.  This feature was demonstrated in the demo video linked above.

The video also shows some impressive slicing and mesh clipping, adding in new degrees of interactivity with your data.   Once they get the Animation support added in, this could be a great way to “share” your data with others in a tight setting.

VES Demonstration from Kitware on Vimeo.

via The Kitware Blog – VES: Development in Iterations.

Science ipad, kitware, opengles, visweek

If you’ve always wanted to know more about VTK or Paraview but haven’t had the time, or haven’t been able to convince your management to spring for paid training, Kitware has heard your complaints.

Kitware is pleased to announce the availability of free online courses in support of its open-source communities. The courses, designed to give new and beginning users the skills and knowledge required to effectively use these open-source tools, will provide an introduction to the Visualization Toolkit (VTK), CMake, ParaView, and the Insight Toolkit (ITK). Each 90-minute course will cover one toolkit and be taught by an expert Kitware instructor.

You can hit their Training website and see the “Upcoming Online Courses” to see the list.  They’ll be offering at first one class a month, with the first “Intro to VTK” coming up on October 12th.

via Kitware – News: Free Online Courses Now Available.

Science education, kitware, paraview, training, vtk

Congratulations to Kitware and Berk Geveci for winning a nice $150k DOE grant to build a new user-friendly data analysis application for the complex worldwide climate science databases.

“ClimatePipes will provide access to data that can have a real impact on global climate changes. It will allow the public to better appreciate climate change and enable industries to use climate data in a variety of unforeseen applications,” said Berk Geveci, director of scienfitic computing at Kitware and principle investigator on this SBIR grant. “Our solution aims to be the platform for user-friendly data access, but not to replace high-end analysis tools for scientists. We are looking forward to a tool that is very simple, intuitive, and that can be used by non-researchers and non-programmers.”

I can’t say for certain, but I suspect this will rely heavily on their already built “ParaViewWeb” system for the visualization parts, but I look forward to seeing what they come up with for data provenance.

via Kitware Awarded Department of Energy Research Grant to aid Access to Data Provided by the Ongoing Efforts of the U.S. Global Change Research Program.

Science climate, doe, kitware, nsf

Fans of Kitware can check out their latest application, a small entry into the mobile iPad space, with KiwiViewer.

KiwiViewer is a free, interactive application for exploration of geometric datasets on multi-touch mobile devices. Kiwi currently supports STL, OBJ, and VTK/VTP surface geometry files. Datasets may be loaded into Kiwi from email attachments or from DropBox.

The app is fairly limited: No more than 65k vertices, and apparently no use of Color.  However, keep in mind that this is Version 0.0.1 and is guaranteed to only get better from here!

via KiwiViewer.

Graphics ipad, kitware

Kitware’s VTK was one of the lucky selections in this year’s “Google Summer of Code”, and they’re now accepting applications for lots of different little projects in everyone’s favorite visualization API.  A few of them so far (check out the full list here)

• iPad/iPhone Support for ParaView
• WebGL Volume Rendering
• Protovis in C++
• IEEE VisWeek2010 Algorithms
• AMR Volume Rendering

And lots more..

Kitware – News: Visualization Toolkit Selected for Google Summer of Code.

Science google, kitware, vtk

If you love ParaView and VTK, then you should definitely look at this newest press release from Kitware which discusses their recent SBIR win to develop some new features for massive parallelization, for use by NASA.

In this investigative phase Kitware will identify scaling bottlenecks in ParaView, an open-source visualization application currently used by NASA to explore the results of trillion element particle simulations on the Pleiades supercomputer. As the number of processors scales up past ten thousand, Kitware anticipates that the most critical issues will be data IO, architectural overhead, and how to composite of the partial results. Although the Phase I effort of this project is limited to developing prototypes and selecting a solution, if the Phase II effort is funded these improvements will be incorporated into ParaView and the underlying Visualization Toolkit (VTK) which will benefit tens of thousands of researchers world-wide.

Paraview already works surprisingly well on large-problems, but the 100,000 core runs their mentioning are problematic for any piece of software.  I can’t wait to see what they add!

via Kitware Wins NASA Contract to Develop Open-Source Scientific Visualization Software.

Science kitware, nasa, paraview

Kitware has just announced the immediate availability of ParaView 3.10, boasting a huge new collection of features.  For starters:

For the 3.10 release,  we have added 60 new readers, which include: ANSYS, CGNS, Chombo, Dyna3D, Enzo, Mili, Miranda, Nastran, Pixie, Samrai, Silo, and Tecplot Binary. A full listing of supported readers can be found in the ParaView Users Guide. We also added the ability for developers to create ParaView reader plugins from previously developed VisIt reader plugins. You can find a full guide on how to do this on the VisIt Database Bridge.

After that, they have a new Python-based calculator:

We have included a Python-based calculator which makes it possible to write operations using Python. The Python calculator uses NumPy, which lets you use advanced functions such as gradients, curls, and divergence easily in expressions. Also the NumPy module is packaged in the ParaView binary and is importable from the ParaView Python shell.

But that’s not all.  They’ve got a new parallel-standalone version, great for folks on beefy workstations, along with new menus, smarter filters, and a new pipeline for composite and multi-block datasets.

A huge collection of new features, all available for free right now!

via Kitware – News: ParaView 3.10.0 Now Available.

Science kitware, paraview, software

RSNA is underway and Kitware’s big announcement has been made: VolView, their premiere volume visualization application, is now freely available worldwide.  They’re careful to admit that it has not been FDA cleared so it can’t be used in clinical environments without proper IRB approval, however the capabilities for research and data visualization are immense.

“The 3D imaging and segmentation capabilities of VolView are among the most advanced in the world” said Rick Avila, Senior Director of Health Care Solutions at Kitware. “Our goal is to provide this advanced imaging tool to researchers around the world and work with the imaging community to improve the capabilities and help us make a future version of VolView system both free and open source.”

If you’ve never had the chance to see VolView in action before, see this video for a short demonstration.

via Kitware Offers Free Global Access to VolView at RSNA 2010 | Benzinga.com.

Science kitware, rsna, software, volview