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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Hi everyone:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Greetings from <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Kauai</st1:City>,
<st1:State w:st="on">Hawaii</st1:State></st1:place>, where the weather finally
was nice this afternoon after several days of rain! But I am sure you don’t
want to hear that ;)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Patrick gave me a very nice writeup on the SPIE demo that I
want to share with everyone<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>He correctly notes that unless we develop a user community
the toolkit will not catch on <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>So I encourage everyone to read his thoughts below and
perhaps we can just spend a few minutes on the tcon tomorrow discussing this<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>There will also be a bonus for anyone who knows what the
word “promethean” is as Patrick used it below – I had to look
it up myself!<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Kevin<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The IGSTK
demo for SPIE went on pretty well and we had a good crowd of audience, around
50~60 people. I guess half of the people are Kevin’s collaborators,
sponsors, and supporters, and the other half are people who are really
interested in this toolkit. So we still have our market out there. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>I have
got plenty of positive feedbacks from both the demo and poster session. I
summarize them into following categories: <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<ol start=1 type=1>
<li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>IGSTK really scratches the itches for the image
guidance research community. Most of the people told me this is the
toolkits they wanted and waited for so long. Some one even told me he
wants to build the same thing as the demo application and uses it in his
proposal. So there is a demand for IGSTK here, the question is will us be
able to meet the user’s requirements and expectations? <o:p></o:p></span></font></li>
<li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>IGSTK has some promethean ideas. Some people were
interested in the state machine and logging components in IGSTK, and they
want to incorporate those into their own development. There is a possible opportunity
to promote the design pattern of IGSTK as an open standard for surgery
guidance applications. <o:p></o:p></span></font></li>
<li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
mso-list:l1 level1 lfo1'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>One big concern is: Is IGSTK easy to use? Will it
help with my research? I think we are somewhat blind while pursuing the
technical innovation and being paranoid for safety. We ignored the users
for a long time. In fact an open source project should be user driven at
the very beginning, but it’s not too late for us to think about how
to attract users now. We can do the following to increase the usability
and marketability of IGSTK: <o:p></o:p></span></font></li>
<ol start=1 type=1>
<li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;mso-list:l1 level2 lfo1'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Provide elaborate documentation and API
reference <o:p></o:p></span></font></li>
<li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;mso-list:l1 level2 lfo1'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Write “The Book” to justify our
design choice (another way to promote open standard) and give out nice
user tutorial. <o:p></o:p></span></font></li>
<li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;mso-list:l1 level2 lfo1'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Provide convenient script or automatic process
to build and use the toolkit. Provide template application to give user a
jump start. <o:p></o:p></span></font></li>
<li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;mso-list:l1 level2 lfo1'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Make more example and ready to use applications <br>
There are more we can do: <o:p></o:p></span></font></li>
<li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;mso-list:l1 level2 lfo1'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Give options to user to build IGSTK in different
critical level. Lower critical level will have less API restriction and
more flexible. <o:p></o:p></span></font></li>
<li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;mso-list:l1 level2 lfo1'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Make IGSTK usable for people who are only
interested in IGSTK’s components such as the tracker, state
machine, logger, and so on. <o:p></o:p></span></font></li>
<li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;mso-list:l1 level2 lfo1'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Support different GUI, and extend IGSTK based on
user requirements. While talking to people in the conference, I
encouraged them to try it, give us feedbacks, and submit feature
requirements. Reason one is to get user involved in the future
development, reason two is to keep IGSTK moving forward. <o:p></o:p></span></font></li>
</ol>
</ol>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>For the
future: <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<ol start=1 type=1>
<li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>To make IGSTK a success open source project, our
key task in the remaining phase of this project is to promote IGSTK and
build user community. We can’t just make this toolkit and give it
out for free. We have to make sure it is a good toolkit that people are
willing to use it, and keep developing it. <o:p></o:p></span></font></li>
<li class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
mso-list:l0 level1 lfo2'><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>One possible source of funding would be: If we
have a good number of users and make IGSTK the leading toolkits in this
field, we can then seek for industry support from hardware maker such as
NDI. This is the “Widget Frosting” business model mentioned in
Eric Raymond’s paper, <a
href="http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/writings/magic-cauldron"
title="http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/magic-cauldron">“The Magic
Cauldron”</a><span class=urlexpansion> (<i><span
style='font-style:italic'>http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/magic-cauldron</span></i>)</span>.
For spending very little on supporting the open source development of
IGSTK, the hardware company can actually get more returns. Quote,
“In this situation, opening source is a no-brainer. There’s no
revenue stream to lose, so there’s no downside. What the vendor
gains is a dramatically larger developer pool, more rapid and flexible
response to customer needs, and better reliability through peer review. It
gets ports to other environments for free. It probably also gains
increased customer loyalty as its customers’ technical staffs put
increasing amounts of time into the code to improve the source as they
require.” This is all based on the popularity of our toolkit, so we
should keep promoting and improving our toolkit. <o:p></o:p></span></font></li>
</ol>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=blue face=Arial><span style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:blue'> </span></font> <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Courier New"'>------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
Kevin Cleary,
Ph.D.
Work phone: 202-687-8253<br>
Associate
Professor
Work fax: 202-784-3479<br>
Deputy Director <br>
<br>
Imaging Science and Information Systems (<st1:place w:st="on">ISIS</st1:place>)
Center<br>
Department of
Radiology
Pager: 202-901-2033<br>
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Georgetown</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">University</st1:PlaceType> <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Medical</st1:PlaceName>
<st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Center</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>
Cell phone: 202-294-3409<br>
<st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">2115 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 603</st1:address></st1:Street>
Home phone: 301-299-0788<br>
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Washington</st1:City>, <st1:State
w:st="on">DC</st1:State>, <st1:PostalCode w:st="on">20007</st1:PostalCode></st1:place>
Home fax: 301-299-0789</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><st1:place w:st="on"><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New"'>ISIS</span></font></st1:place><font
size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New"'>
center: </span></font><a href="http://www.isis.georgetown.edu/"
title="http://www.isis.georgetown.edu/"><font size=2 face="Courier New"
title="http://www.isis.georgetown.edu/"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Courier New"'>www.isis.georgetown.edu</span></font></a><br>
<font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New"'>Research
group: </span></font><a href="http://www.caimr.georgetown.edu/"
title="http://www.caimr.georgetown.edu/"><font size=2 face="Courier New"
title="http://www.caimr.georgetown.edu/"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Courier New"'>www.caimr.georgetown.edu</span></font></a><br>
<font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New"'>WashCAS:
</span></font><a href="http://www.washcas.org/" title="http://www.washcas.org/"><font
size=2 face="Courier New" title="http://www.washcas.org/"><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New"'>www.washcas.org</span></font></a><br>
<font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New"'>Email:
</span></font><a href="mailto:cleary@georgetown.edu"
title="mailto:cleary@georgetown.edu"><font size=2 face="Courier New"
title="mailto:cleary@georgetown.edu"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:
"Courier New"'>cleary@georgetown.edu</span></font></a><br>
<font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Courier New"'>-------------------------------------------------------------------</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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