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VTK

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, seeVTK (disambiguation).
Developer(s)Kitware Inc.
Stable release
9.4.0[1]Edit this on Wikidata / 24 November 2024;12 days ago(24 November 2024)
RepositoryVTK Repository
Written inC,C++,Python[2]
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeScientific visualization
License3-Clause BSD
Websitewww.vtk.org

TheVisualization Toolkit(VTK) is afree softwaresystem for3D computer graphics,image processingandscientific visualization.[3]

VTK is distributed under theGNU-approved[4]andFSF-approved[5]BSD 3-clause License.[6]

Functionality

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VTK consists of aC++class library and several interpreted interface layers includingTcl/Tk,Java,andPython.The toolkit is created and supported by theKitwareteam. VTK supports a various visualization algorithms including:scalar,vector,tensor,texture, and volumetric methods; and advanced modeling techniques such as: implicit modeling, polygon reduction, mesh smoothing, cutting, contouring, andDelaunay triangulation.VTK has aninformation visualizationframework, has a suite of 3D interaction widgets, supports parallel processing, and integrates with various databases and GUI toolkits such asQtandTk.VTK is cross-platform and runs on Linux, Windows, Mac and Unix platforms. The core of VTK is implemented as a C++ toolkit, requiring users to build applications by combining various objects into an application. The system also supports automated wrapping of the C++ core into Python, Java and Tcl, so that VTK applications may also be written using these programming languages.[3]

History

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VTK was initially created in 1993 as companion software to the bookThe Visualization Toolkit: An Object-Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics.[7]The book and software were written by three researchers (Will Schroeder, Ken Martin and Bill Lorensen) on their own time and with permission from General Electric (thus the ownership of the software resided with, and continues to reside with, the authors). After the core of VTK was written, users and developers around the world began to improve and apply the system to real-world problems.[3]

With the founding ofKitware,the VTK community grew rapidly, and toolkit usage expanded into academic, research and commercial applications. A number of major companies and organizations, such asSandia National Laboratories,Livermore National Laboratory,Los Alamos National Laboratoryfunded the development of VTK and even developed a number of VTK modules themselves.[3]VTK forms the core of the3DSlicerbiomedical computing application, and numerous research papers at IEEE Visualization and other conferences based on VTK have appeared. VTK has been used on a large 1024-processor computer at theLos Alamos National Laboratoryto process nearly aPetabyteof data.

Later VTK was expanded to support the ingestion,[clarification needed]processing and display ofinformaticsdata. This work was supported bySandia National Laboratoriesunder the 'Titan' project.[8]

Criticism

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In 2013, a survey paper on visualization forradiotherapynoticed that while VTK is a powerful and widely known toolkit, it lacked a number of important features, such as multivolume rendering, had no support of proprietaryCUDAfromNVidia,no support ofout-of-core renderingand no native support for visualization of time-dependent volumetric data.[9]

However, since 2013 there have been improvements such as VTK-m which can speed-up and parallelize certain computationally intensive tasks[10]using libraries likeSandia'sKokkos.[11]VTK is also used in the visualization pipeline of radiological imaging software such as MEDInria or Starviewer which perform multi-volume (also called fusion) and time-dependent (also called phase) visualizations.[12][13]

See also

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References

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  1. ^.24 November 2024https://gitlab.kitware /vtk/vtk/-/tags/v9.4.0.Retrieved6 December2024.{{cite web}}:Missing or empty|title=(help)
  2. ^"Kitware / VTK - GitLab".
  3. ^abcdVisualization Handbook,Academic Press, 2005,ISBN012387582X,Chapter 30: the Visualization Toolkit
  4. ^"Various Licenses and Comments about Them".Gnu.org.
  5. ^"License:BSD-3-Clause".FSF.org.
  6. ^"Files · v8.1.1 · VTK / VTK".GitLab.
  7. ^Schroeder, Will; Martin, Ken; Lorensen, Bill (2006),The Visualization Toolkit(4th ed.), Kitware,ISBN978-1-930934-19-1
  8. ^"Sandia Titan webpage".Archived fromthe originalon 2009-02-13.Retrieved2008-11-11.
  9. ^Miguel Nunes, Matthias Schlachter, Katja Buehler, "Visualization Tools for Radiotherapy - a Survey", in:Innovative imaging to improve radiotherapy treatments,materials of 2nd summer school by SUMMER Marie Curie Research Training Network, a EU &th Framework Programme, 2013,ISBN1291604170
  10. ^"VTKM".VTKM.Retrieved12 July2020.
  11. ^"Kokkos".Center for Computing Research (CCR).Retrieved2024-09-09.
  12. ^Ruiz, Marc; Julià, Adrià; Boada, Imma (May 2020). "Starviewer and its comparison with other free software DICOM viewers using a novel hierarchical evaluation framework".International Journal of Medical Informatics.137:Supporting materials section.doi:10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2020.104098.hdl:10256/17874.PMID32066084.S2CID211158287.
  13. ^"Github project: An advanced LibreOffice spreadsheet that hierarchically evaluates several features of DICOM viewers".Viewers compasion.Retrieved12 July2020.

Further reading

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