[vtkusers] New reader for VTK - vtkMINCImageReader

[David Gobbi]

David Gobbi wrote:
> Sean McBride wrote:
>> On 2006-08-17 18:06, David Gobbi said:
>>
>>  
>>>> Is it based on MINC 1.4 or 2.0?
>>>>
>>>> Did you collaborate with Leila Baghdadi on this?  Or is this a 
>>>> different
>>>> codebase?
>>>>       
>>> This one is brand new code, based on MINC 1.x, and it cannot read 
>>> MINC 2.x files.
>>>
>>> It actually uses the netcdf libraries directly rather than using the 
>>> minc libraries.  I didn't really have any desire to convert the minc 
>>> library to CMake, or to try to convince Kitware to incorporate the 
>>> minc library into Utilities.
>>>
>>> Since VTK already includes netcdf, it seemed much easier to write a 
>>> reader that uses netcdf directly.
>>>     
>>
>> I see, that makes good sense.  I look forward to trying it out once I
>> get a chance!  Are there any features missing or unfortunate 
>> compromises/
>> omissions due to dropping down to the netcdf level?  

> The only compromise is that my vtkMINCImageReader doesn't have all the 
> data conversion functions that MINC has.  This means there are two 
> restrictions:
>
> 1) The data type (byte, short, float) of the vtkMINCReader's output is 
> always the same as in the file.  You can't do a data conversion while 
> reading the file.
>
> 2) The dimensions are always reordered so that the MINC 
> x[space/frequency] dimensions becomes the VTK x dimension, and 
> similarly for y and z.  You can't choose an arbitrary dimension 
> reordering.
>
> These are issues that I might address in the future.

Oh, and there is one other restriction.  The minc library will 
automatically unzip a minc that ends in ".gz" to the /tmp directory 
before reading it.  This isn't a feature I'm particularly fond of, so I 
doubt that I will ever implement it in my reader.

 - David