[vtkusers] Hardware stereo 3D viewing of confocal images

[Prabhu Ramachandran]

>>>>> "DW" == "Dr. Dan White" <dan at chalkie.org.uk> writes:

    DW> We have many people doing confocal microscopy with multiple
    DW> stains using LSM 510 imaging software.  We want a good way to
    DW> reconstruct 3D images from layers of confocal image "slices",
    DW> and be able to look at the 3D representations in hardware
    DW> stereo on this linux workstation.

    DW> Am I right in thinking VTK has the right tools for this job?
    DW> If so, can anyone give me any tips on how to get started?

Yes, I believe VTK has the right infrastructure for this job.  If you
are serious about using VTK (as opposed to using an application that
uses VTK) you should definitely get the VTK book and users guide
(links avlbl on the http://www.vtk.org pages).

    DW> I have the current VTK sources and docs and examples. What is
    DW> the right way to use the cake complier tool to get VTK up and
    DW> running? I see stuff about Tcl and Tk , and also python

Please read the README.html.  I believe it has some instructions on
installation/compiling etc.

    DW> wrapping, which I know very little about. Does this give the
    DW> GUI? Is there a GUI? Or is it a command line interface?

The GUI is up to you.  VTK is written in C++ but is wrapped to other
languages i.e. you can use VTK from C++, Python, Tcl and Java.  Under
linux it should be possible to use wxWindows, FLTK, FOX and Qt maybe.
I dont know if a GTK+/GTK-- widget for VTK is avlbl.  If you use Tcl,
you can use Tk for the GUI.  With java I believe you can use swing.
With Python you can use, pyGTK, wxPython, Tkinter and Qt.  Any of
these can be used to create a fancy GUI frontend to a VTK application.

    DW> Does VTK allow you to spin and zoom a 3D image around on the
    DW> screen in any direction with the mouse, and use crystal eyes
    DW> stereo viewing??????

Yes and yes.  I dont know about the crystal eyes part but have seen
many posts about it on this list.

cheers,
prabhu