Hi Urban, welcome to MITK!
Disclaimer: I am one of the main MITK developers and know a few things about the Slicer architecture as well. I didn't use the Slicer end-user application extensively, though. We keep a friendly and collaborative atmosphere and meet regularly on various events. I try my best to be objective in the following statements. Both Slicer and MITK have a long history in the medical imaging community and are well known international toolkits / applications with a large user base. MITK positions itself as a multi-layered software platform (written in C++) with a focus on modularity and extensibility. It can be used as a traditional toolkit (aka using C++ shared libraries) which basically extends ITK and VTK. Many projects use MITK as a toolkit and build complete custom applications on top of it. Second, it provides an *application platform* on top of the toolkit for creating your own modular application. This is mostly used in mid-sized to large groups which need to deploy a modular application with custom plug-ins but which re-uses a configurable set of existing MITK functionality. Third, MITK provides an end-user application, called the MITK Workbench which is based on the application platform and aims to be an extensible and easy to use imaging platform, providing the most commonly needed functionality. Many groups also take the MITK Workbench and just add their own plug-ins to extend its functionality. The architecture of 3DSlicer is highly modular as well. As an out-of-the-box end-user application, Slicer contains many specialized imaging algorithms, allowing a wide range of research on existing imaging data without having to program your own plug-in. It can also be extended with different kind of "plug-ins". Some type of plug-ins can even be shared between an MITK application and 3DSlicer (so called CLI modules). In the end-user application, Slicer definitely contains more algorithms contributed by a multitude of plug-ins, whereas the MITK Workbench focuses on the basics and end-user usability. If you are into Python programming, Slicer also offers quite a few possibilities to either create Python plug-ins as CLIs or script Slicer functionality via Python. MITK provides some experimental Python scripting support for the Core library, but it is not as exhaustive as the Slice Python support. If you are into building your own (C++) applications instead of using the provided end-user applications, MITK offers a lot of possibilities and flexibility. While you could probably use Slicer in that context as well, I am not aware of any projects using Slicer except for plug-in development for the existing 3DSlicer application (please tell me if you know any!). Further, MITK at its Core (toolkit level) depends only on VTK and ITK and has no GUI or Qt dependency. Slicer depends on Qt throughout its code-base. Regarding the documentation, Caspar already provided some useful links. We try to provide extensive documentation for the API as well as user documentation. However, documentation is never finished and there is always room for improvements. No matter what you decide to use, we are always interested in the outcome of such evaluations and what your decision process looked like! Best, Sascha On 01/08/2014 12:57 PM, Urban Simoncic wrote: > Dear MITK users, > > I am looking for the software platform that I can use for the > development of tool for medical image processing and visualization. MITK > appears to be one good candidate. Another candidate is Slicer, which > appears to be very similar tool as the MITK. > > I would appreciate if anyone could explain me the differences between > these two tools. I am interested especially in the modularity of the > software and in the quality of the documentation, but any other thoughts > are welcome. > > Thanks, > Urban > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Rapidly troubleshoot problems before they affect your business. Most IT > organizations don't have a clear picture of how application performance > affects their revenue. With AppDynamics, you get 100% visibility into your > Java,.NET, & PHP application. Start your 15-day FREE TRIAL of AppDynamics Pro! > http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=84349831&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk > _______________________________________________ > mitk-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mitk-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CenturyLink Cloud: The Leader in Enterprise Cloud Services. Learn Why More Businesses Are Choosing CenturyLink Cloud For Critical Workloads, Development Environments & Everything In Between. Get a Quote or Start a Free Trial Today. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=119420431&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ mitk-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mitk-users
