Image Toolkit functions as the control panel for a suite of self-contained programs written by the RIC and its collaborators. The program was designed to simplify operation of these programs by unifying them under a common and consistent user interface. The user interface uses forms, file selection boxes, and buttons much like those used in other RIC-developed applications. This makes it much easier for new users to operate the software.
Modularity was a primary design consideration for Image Toolkit. New modules can be easily added and upgrades to modules can be made quickly and, often times, independantly of the common interface. These are critical qualities for software that must be developed and used within a dynamic research environment.
The common interface ensures that all output files from the program modules adhere to the RIC's conventions and can read and write data in standard formats. This means that all image files, alignment files, descriptor files, batch files, and other data files generated by an IT module can be easily moved from one application to another. This is valuable not only for seamless processing streams at the RIC but also for sharing RIC images and data with other sites around the world.
The panel below shows the four access buttons for the software modules currently in place. Several other packages as well as upgrades to the existing ones are currently under development. Each of the existing packages is described below.
This software package was developed by Roger Woods at UCLA and provides an automated method of co-registering images even images of different modalities. Image Toolkit allows the user to select a list of image files to be registered as well as a reference file. Each of the images in the list is registered to the reference image and the alignment data is passed back to the Image Toolkit execuitve for conversion into RIC standard alignment files and/or RIC standard resliced images. Because of its batch organization, Image Toolkit can register a large number of images in a single "run". Output from this module is routinely used in other RIC application software.
Written at the RIC, this module is used to generate a single mathematically robust, alignment file-used to minimize the number of interpolations-from alignment data that has been produced by an application other than SN. Data derived from AIR is such an example. The application concatenates this alignment data to existing .aln files to produce a single alignment file that performs all the required operations. The nature of the alignment file's design allows its source members to be indicated directly in the file. Files selected for concatenation are placed in a batch list so numerous files may be concatenated in a single executiion.
Imagescope is an image viewing tool that supplements the functions of other applications such as Alice and DIPS. It provides a means to view large numbers of image files at the same time-as many as 50 or more files can be viewed simultaneously. The only limiting factors are the size of the screen and the amount of available memory. The program directly loads image files without regard to orientation, image modality, or size considerations. The program can be set to view the same slice in all images and step through the image slices using a single global control. Imagescope allows users to:
Imagescope contains a small set of display features including brightness-contrast controls (individual), global grey-scale adjustment, text control for screen capture requirements, color scale adjustments, and individual/global slice selection utilities.
Image Toolkit accesses the Pelazzari surface fit program to, in the vocabulary of the algorithm, fit "head" files to a "hat" file. It takes one input "hat" image, and any number of "head" images and fits them to the "hat" image. Image Toolkit first creates the "head" and "hat" files for each image using the hull3D program developed at the RIC. These files are compatible with Pelizzari's surface fit program. The surface fit is then performed. Finally, an alignment file is created for each "head" image.
The Pelizarri program was modified to fit the RIC processing stream and to maintain file compatibility, including RIC-standard .des and .aln files. The user interface of the Pelizarri program was replaced in order to interface the modules directly with the Image Toolkit drivers.