[vtkusers] New reader for VTK - vtkMINCImageReader

[David Gobbi]

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.

 - David Gobbi