NA-MIC and NITRC

Background

NITRC is an NIH-sponsored gforge-based tools and resources clearinghouse to support neuroimaging. NITRC provides project hosting including svn/cvs, mailing lists, forums, web sites, and related collaboration tools. These resources are available to researchers and projects can be created as-needed. NA-MIC is dedicated to the development of tools. While NA-MIC maintains some similar infrastructure for projects like Slicer3, it does not offer these services to the community. Thus there is an excellent match between the two projects and NA-MIC is actively moving to leverage NITRC as a way to host Slicer3 modules.

To facilitate this, NA-MIC developers are creating software hooks that will allow Slicer3 modules to be hosted on NITRC. This will be analogous to the way a web browser plug in like QuickTime or Flash can be developed by Apple or Adobe independently of the web browser developed by Microsoft. The goal will be for Slicer3 users to be able to easily download and install extensions where the development is hosted at NITRC.

Current Activities

• Ongoing discussions between NA-MIC and NITRC personnel
  • face-to-face meetings at Society for Neuroscience 2007
  • Steve Pieper to serve on NITRC change control board
• Slicer3:Loadable_Modules project to enable NITRC-based plug-ins.
• Slicer page at NITRC
• DTI Rician Noise removal filter, slicer3 plug-in developed at University of Utah
• Image Registration Tool BRAINSfit, slicer3 plug-in developed at University of Iowa
• Stochastic Tractography, slicer3 plug-in developed at MIT

Contact

Steve Pieper (pieper at bwh.harvard.edu)