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July 2014
                                                                 Issue 38
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ParaView Contours
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Two Fluids Level Set: High Performance Simulation and Post Processing
Two Fluids Level Set: High Performance Simulation and Post Processing

Visualizing Structured Grids in ParaView: Animating Contours
Visualizing Structured Grids in ParaView: Animating Contours

ParaViewWeb Generic Visualizer
ParaViewWeb Generic Visualizer

This last month has been busy with new releases and presentations. We announced the availability of our WAMI tracking system on Forge.mil, presented new features for Slicer extensions at the NA-MIC Summer Project Week, and demonstrated our diverse scientific computing capabilities at SciPy 2014. We also released CMake 3.0.0 and ITK 4.6 release candidates.    

 

If you missed us at the NA-MIC Summer Project Week or SciPy 2014, be sure to reach out to meet up with us at our upcoming events: ASME Advanced Design & Manufacturing Impact Forum, ICPR 2014, and 2014 Strategies in Biophotonics

 

If you are interested in a career in open source, Kitware offers many perks and benefits, as well as a great culture in which to work. We currently have a need for passionate and talented scientific visualization developers, especially those with strong C++ and/or JavaScript skills. If this describes you, check out our open positions at jobs.kitware.com!

     

-The Kitware Communications Team

storyCWAMI Tracking System Available on Forge.mil
Tracking System Part of Broader Kitware Image & Video Exploitation and Retrieval Toolkit


Kitware recently announced the immediate availability of its state-of-the-art Wide Area Motion Imagery (WAMI) tracking system on Forge.mil, as part of the Kitware Image & Video Exploitation and Retrieval Toolkit (KWIVER). Full source code is available with unlimited rights, under the conditions of the DoD Community Source Usage Agreement, to anyone who can access Forge.mil.

 

Developed with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Kitware's WAMI tracker in KWIVER is capable of producing tracks in real time from WAMI data across a wide range of resolutions and frame rates, by dynamically distributing processing across a compute cluster. The resulting data assists intelligence analysts as they support military operations, both live and forensically. Recently, Kitware's WAMI tracker was successfully transitioned to theatre as part of the Air Force's intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance system, where it produced tracks on downlinked WAMI in real time.

 

By placing its tracking technology on Forge.mil, Kitware is following its company-�wide commitment to open�source software and scientific collaboration. Kitware intends to work with government and government contractor personnel to enhance the system and to help deploy its capabilities as part of other government projects. In addition to tracking technology, Kitware plans to add analytics to KWIVER from previous and ongoing government efforts. 

Kitware, MSKCC, and IBM Research Participated in Hackahton to Further Cancer Research

In collaboration with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and the IBM Watson Research Center, Kitware hosted a hackathon on Large-Scale Dermatology Image Repository.

 

In this collaboration, MSKCC is pursuing a large-scale data sharing initiative through which thousands of dermatological images will be publicly shared with the goal of furthering cancer research. This large collection of images will include annotations and metadata that will empower researchers to apply data analysis techniques to better understand the onset and evolution of skin cancer. IBM Research is playing a scientific role in researching algorithms to support the diagnosis of melanoma detection.

 

Among the topics discussed at the hackathon were the overarching plans for data sharing, the software platforms for the image repository, software tools for image annotation, methodologies for detecting skin cancer by computing changes between images and baselines, integrating images into Electronic Medical Records (EMR), and licensing terms to ensure that data for the Dermatological Image Repository will be made available in the Public Domain.

storyASlicer Extensions Demonstrated at NA-MIC Event
Presentation Highlighted Usage and Contribution Process

 

Kitware presented an overview of the Slicer extensions usage and contribution process during the 19th NA-MIC Summer Project Week. The presentation included an interactive demonstration of the creation of a Python-based Slicer extension using the new ExtensionWizard that Kitware developed, which greatly simplifies the Slicer extension creation and distribution process.

 

Slicer extensions provide easy access to industry-leading algorithms and interfaces that optimize Slicer for specific use cases.  Currently, over 50 extensions have been contributed to Slicer. These extensions are available for Linux, MaxOSX, and Windows. Some of the available Slicer extensions include Airway Segmentation, Atlas-based Brain Segmentation, and DTI Fiber Viewer.  

 

Future Slicer developments include methods for automatically receiving updates to extensions, the ability to automatically install extensions when new versions of Slicer are installed, and the ability to automatically create a Wiki page that describes each contributed extension. 

storyC3Scientific Computing Abilities Exhibited at SciPy
Kitware Presented Diverse Capabilities through Participation in Conference Activities

 

Kitware was an active participant at the 13th annual Scientific Computing and Python (SciPy) conference, which occurred from July 6 to July 12, 2014. The conference, which was hosted by members of academic, commercial, and government organizations, was dedicated to the "advancement of scientific computing through open source Python software for mathematics, science, and engineering."

 

Not only was Kitware a Silver sponsor of the event, but Matt McCormick and Aashish Chaudhary served as members of the SciPy Program Committee. In addition, Kitware demonstrated its diverse scientific computing capabilities in areas such as geospatial dataset visualization, climate model analysis, and cross-platform builds across HPC, desktop, and mobile platforms by participating in several activities including presentations, developer sprints, and Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions.

 

More details on Kitware's participation in these conference activities, along with presentation abstracts, are available in the event listing. Stay tuned for an upcoming trip report and tutorial videos. 

storyE5Recognition Technology Highlighted at CVPR
Members of Kitware's Computer Vision Team Presented Posters, Papers, and Tutorials

Eran Swears, Anthony Hoogs, Matt Leotta, and Sangmin Oh attended the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, which took place from June 23 to June 28, 2014, in Columbus, OH. CVPR is an annual conference for computer vision research, with more than 2000 attendees. Kitware participated in the main conference as well as several co-located workshops, presentations, and short courses.

 

During the main conference, Eran and Anthony presented a poster covering their CVPR paper "Complex Activity Recognition using Granger Constrained DBN in Sports and Surveillance Video," which was also featured as a video spotlight. In addition, Eran, Matt, Anthony, and Sangmin gave a live demonstration in the Activity Detection and Scene Understanding demo session. Sangmin also served as a co-organizer of the Emerging Topics in Human Activity Recognition tutorial, and Eran presented his dissertation at the Doctoral Consortium.

For more details and information on additional presentations, visit the Kitware Blog