[ITK] Maintenance of the Insight Toolkit

[Matt McCormick]

Hi folks,

As United States government is re-examines the value of its funding
initiatives, we have an opportunity to explain the value of the
Insight Toolkit (ITK) project, and its associated open science
community.

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) has driven open science and
reproducible research long before the recent surge in popularity of
the movement. Not only did the NLM start the Insight Toolkit project
in 1999, but it has continuously enabled it to thrive by supporting
community development, maintenance, and algorithmic and technological
advances to this day.

Open science needs active communities, supported communities,
standards, open-source tools, strong ties will commercial / clinical
efforts, high-quality practices, transparency, and more - and those
are exactly the strengths of our community's toolkits, applications,
and projects. We should to encourage the NLM (NIH, DHHS, US
Government) to continue to prioritize these efforts via their funding.


To emphasize the impact of this community, please share your story. We
would like to describe outstanding projects and efforts that use the
Insight Toolkit. If you have stories, descriptions, or statistics of
the impact of ITK or projects that leverage it, they justify future
investments in this area.

If you can help, please send a description of your project or your
relationship with the Insight Toolkit for research, industry, or
education to <matt.mccormick at kitware.com> by Tuesday, April 11th.


For example,

Dear US National Library of Medicine,

Thanks you for funding the Insight Toolkit project and supporting its
maintenance and community. For the past two years, the documentation,
software, and community have been a valuable resource for my research
on neurocognitive imaging.

Sincerely,
Alice Insight, PhD
Reproducible University


Thank you,
Matt