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vIST/e is an open source tool, formerly known as DTITool, and developed primarily by the Biomedical Image Analysis Group led by Anna Vilanova of the Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands. It is a powerful, platform-independent software solution for the visualization and analysis of complex, high-dimensional imaging data such as Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) and High Angular Resolution Diffusion Imaging (HARDI). Software development and mainentance of the vIST/e core framework is done by decidated developers employed by Imaging, Science and Technology Eindhoven (IST/e), an TU/e organisation that brings together all imaging-related research from various TU/e faculties such as Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science. vIST/e has a plugin-based architecture which allows third parties to develop new plugins to extend the tool. At the TU/e we have a team of academic researchers and students who regularly add new plugins to the vIST/e framework.
Features
An overview of the many features of vIST/e is given below.
- vIST/e is programmed in C++. It uses the Visualization Toolkit for visualization and pipelined data processing, as well as the cross-platform toolkit Qt Framework for an easy-to-use Graphical User Interface.
- vIST/e introduces a powerful new plugin system, which allows for modular development with increased extensibility and stability.
- Powerful GPU-based visualization techniques allow for smooth, real-time visualization of large data sets. Using custom ray tracing algorithms created with OpenGL, vIST/e can render DTI ellipsoids and HARDI spherical harmonics glyphs up to 4th order. The high frame rates offered by modern GPU technology allows for interactive exploration of this complex data.
- Diffusion Tensor Imaging data can be visualized and interactively explored in a number of ways, including multiple cross-sections, volume rendering, and tensor glyphs. Derived scalar volumes, including various different anisotropy measures, can be computed and visualized. Data from other modalities, such as structural MRI, can be shown alongside the DTI data.
- Various fiber tracking methods allow for fast and accurate reconstruction of fiber pathways. Interactively defined Regions of Interest (ROIs) can be used for seeding and filtering of fibers. Fibers are visualized either as lines, optionally using a powerful, GPU-based lighting engine, or as 3D structures such as tubes.
- Scalar volumes, glyphs, and fibers can be colored using a wide array of coloring option. Customizable color loop-up tables allow for highly flexible visualization of scalar data.
- Visualization and processing of various different HARDI formats is supported. HARDI data is interactively visualized using highly detailed glyphs rendered on the GPU. HARDI glyphs can be visualized in combination with DTI glyphs, for a better overview of complex diffusion data.
- vIST/e includes support for NVIDIA's Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA), which enables highly parallel, GPU-based data processing, allowing for significant speed-up of computationally expensive algorithms.
Documentation
You can find documentation about vIST/e, such as installation instructions, build instructions and tutorials in the SourceForge WIKI pages.
Downloads
vIST/e installers and binaries can be downloaded here from SourceForge.net.
Source Code
The vIST/e open source code is under BSD style license
vIST/e is hosted at BerliOS Developer instead of SourceForge.net. BerliOS offers greater flexibility, especially with respect to access permissions to the source code repository. The main trunk directory is accessible to everyone. However, there are also private branches where TU/e developers (staff and students) are working on code that is still unpublished or is developed in collaboration with 3rd parties. For any kind of questions and comments please mail to vIST/e Team.
You can find instructions about how to obtain the vIST/e source code in the SourceForge WIKI pages. The procedure is explained in the tutorials about building vIST/e from source. You are well come for any kind o