As we wrap up 2011, we look back on all that we've accomplished this year. There are the obvious milestones - our best ranking yet on the Inc. 5000 list, amazing growth at Kitware Inc. and Kitware SAS, and awards and recognition for our technologies. However, if you ask the folks around here about our greatest achievements, invariably they'll point to a collaboration they've had with other researchers, and their collective contributions toward improving prostate surgery, understanding climate change, or increasing our national security. So we must end this year with a heartfelt "Thank You" to all our past and current collaborators. We are looking forward to another great year of scientific progress in 2012!

On November 30th, the Insight Journal received its 500th paper submission! The Insight Journal is an open access publication powered by Midas, focused on medical image processing and visualization. The visionary Journal was launched in 2005 with a mission of bringing reproducibility back to scientific publishing. With each article submission, authors must also provide all source code, their input data and parameters so that their work can be replicated and aptly reviewed. In fact, the first review is automated once the author clicks submit, and provides a launching point for community members and the author to discuss, review and refine the work.  Through the support of the National Library of Medicine, the Insight Journal has created a forum for the active exchange and debate of ideas while raising publishing standards to meet the needs of the digital age.

Congratulations to B. Moreau and A. Gouaillard on their paper "Exact Geometrical Predicate: Point in circle," the 500th paper published in the Insight Journal! 

 
The Kitware medical team attended the 97th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) from November 27th through December 2nd. We had a great time teaching this year, presenting both "Open Source Applications for Medical Imaging Research" and "Introduction to Open-Source Software Libraries for Medical Imaging." We also had a chance to exhibit in the Quantitative Imaging Reading Room where we showed Slicer 4.0, VolView, Midas, and our latest work in mobile computing. It is always great to spend some time with our collaborators and meet new folks in this area. We hope to see you next year in Chicago!

Kitware, in collaboration with the National Association for Medical Image Computing (NA-MIC), is pleased to announce the release of Slicer 4.0. This is a major release of the 3D Slicer software, which is an open-source platform for medical image segmentation, registration, visualization and analysis.

This release features several notable developments aimed toward improved performance and usability. One of the most significant is a refactoring of the Slicer core that had the developers working on almost every line of code. There is also an updated graphic user interface and a simplified python interface. For the complete list of improvements, please see the wiki announcement.  The Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows binaries are available on the 3D Slicer download page.