[vtkusers] Re: Announce; Insight (ITK) Segmentation and Registration Toolkit

[Jianlong Zhou]

Hi, Will,

I think it is great if ITK and VTK can be integrated into one project. 
Actually segmentation and visualization can not be seprated. They 
benefit from each other. I hope ITK should provide more convenient 
tools to communicate and integrate with VTK.

Best regards,
Jianlong

> Hi Xenios-
> 
> 
> >What is the relationship (if any) between ITK and VTK? Can they easily 
> >co-exist in the same project?
> 
> There are several features that simplifies VTK / ITK integration.
> + Thanks to CMake, ITK and VTK can be built and linked in a consistent 
> fashion. ITK requires ANSI C++, including RTTI, so VTK must be built with 
> the ANSI flag enabled (VTK_USE_ANSI_STDLIB).
> + There are filters (called importers and exporters) in VTK and ITK that 
> allow data to be moved between pipelines.
> + There are readers and writers that allow data exchange.
> 
> ITK has no visualization support, so using VTK as the visualization engine 
> is a natural. (In fact there are several ITK examples that are written 
> assuming VTK is available.)  It also has a dataflow architecture, but in 
> ITK there are just two data object types: an image and a mesh. The mesh in 
> particular is more flexible but less memory efficient. The ITK image is 
> templated over pixel type, so it is possible to have pixels that are quite 
> complex. The ITK iterators are quite beautiful, they support n-dimensions 
> and nicely simplify the code.
> 
> While there are similarities in design, style, and extreme programming 
> style (i.e., dashboard), the main thing that you will notice is that ITK is 
> very templated in the generic programming style. This means that ITK is 
> compile-time oriented versus VTK's run-time orientation. This use of C++ is 
> almost like a new programming language, since it uses features of C++ that 
> some people haven't seen too much of. On the plus side, generic programming 
> tends to produce faster executing code. You will definitely need a good, 
> modern compiler to handle ITK.
> 
> Another integration path: ITK has developed a system called CABLE that 
> automatically wraps C++ with Tcl, a lot like VTK does now. The only thing 
> is that the process is enormously more difficult because of the templated 
> code. CABLE is a general solution, but slower and creates much bigger 
> libraries than the custom VTK wrapping process that we have now. Eventually 
> this will be refined and VTK/ITK programs using Tcl or other interpreted 
> languages should be real easy to do. For now it is a bit tricky to work with.
> 
> Will
> 
> William J. Schroeder, Ph.D
> Kitware, Inc.
> 469 Clifton Corporate Parkway
> Clifton Park, NY 12065
> will.schroeder at kitware.com
> 1-518-371-3971 x102
> 1-518-371-3971 (fax)
> 
> _______________________________________________
> This is the private VTK discussion list. 
> Please keep messages on-topic. Check the FAQ at: <http://public.kitware.com/cgi-bin/vtkfaq>
> Follow this link to subscribe/unsubscribe:
> http://public.kitware.com/mailman/listinfo/vtkusers