ITK-SNAP 3 - A Major New Release
Version 3.0 is the first major release of ITK-SNAP that is funded by the NIH grant R01 EB014346, "Continued development and maintenance of the ITK-SNAP 3D image segmentation software." This version includes an almost complete rewrite of the software, along with new features focused on multi-modality image support.
A completely reworked graphical user interface based on Qt
It took two years, but we created a next-generation user interface for ITK-SNAP using the Qt4 library, replacing the outdated FLTK library, and ensuring future viability of the tool. The new GUI provides greatly improved interactivity and added functionality. It takes fewer mouse clicks to accomplish common actions, making ITK-SNAP easier to use and learn. The code behind the new GUI is much better structured, which will make it easier to add new functionality in the future.
Mini:welcome_page.png"A new start-up view provides quick access to recently opened images and workspaces"
Mini:layer_editor.png"The layer editor includes lots of new functionality, including editing layer visibility and order at a glance, better contrast adjustment and color map editors, and much more."
Mini:label_editor.png"The new label editor allows searching for labels among several new features"
Mini:left_pane.png"The main control panel is organized into inspectors with many more features exposed"
Mini:reorient.png"A new look for the reorientation wizard"
Mini:threshold.png"The automatic segmentation dialogs are richer and more dynamic"
Mini:settings.png"A comprehensive settings dialog"
Extensive support for multi-modality image segmentation
The biggest change in ITK-SNAP is how the tool handles multi-modality images. Even though overlay images were supported in version 2.x, they really shine in ITK-SNAP 3. There are new tools for visualizing and managing overlays, and crucially, you can use multiple modalities for automatic segmentation.
Workspaces
Complementing the tool's improved support for multi-modality image segmentation is the new functionality for saving and opening workspaces. A workspace describes all of the images loaded into ITK-SNAP, as well as associated settings, such as label descriptions, color maps, and segmentation parameters. Workspaces are small XML files that can be distributed along with the images they reference. This makes sharing with collaborators much easier.
Memory and Performance Improvements
Extensive refactoring has resulted in a reduced memory footprint (4 bytes per voxel in image navigation and manual segmentation mode, versus 6 bytes per voxel in version 2.4) and better performance, particularly on multi-core computers. 3D visualization has been optimized extensively, and for most segmentations can now be updated on the fly. Future versions will continue to improve performance and reduce memory by taking advantage of the GPU and compressing segmentation volumes in memory.
Improved DICOM Support
When loading images from a DICOM directory or DVD, parsing is much faster, and the list of 3D image volumes is much more informative than in earlier versions. A new metadata viewer in the layer inspector window allows quick searching for metadata in DICOM tags.
Mini:dicom1.png"A DICOM series selector makes it easy to find the right image in a folder, CD or DVD"
Mini:dicom2.png"A new way to search and browse DICOM metadata"
Many other new features and improvements
