2014 Winter Project Week:ParameterSerialization

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  Projects List

Key Investigators

• Matt McCormick, Kitware
• Steve Pieper, Isomics
• Jim Miller, GE

Project Description

Objective

• Many analysis algorithms have advanced parameters that must be tuned to work with given datasets.
• Exposing all the advanced parameters in the GUI confuses a user who is only interested in applying the algorithm.
• Exploring an algorithm parameter space is more thorough, efficient, and revealing when done programmically instead of manually in a GUI.
• Provenance with saved parameter files is important for reproducibility.
• The object is to allows CLI modules serialize and deserialize CLI parameters in a JSON file.
  • The CLI XML parameters can then be used for "important" or "common" parameters can be tweaked by a user.
  • Advanced parameters that deviate from the default can be stored in the file for manual or programmatic adjustment.
  • JSON is format that is concise, has good human readability and editability, and widely supported by programming languages.

Approach, Plan

• Create a unit test.
• Add JsonCpp and ParameterSerializer to the Slicer superbuild.
• Enable the SlicerExecutionModel_USE_SERIALIZER in SlicerExecutionModel.
• Consider writing a JSON Schema for CLIs that can be used with a validator.
• Consider implications for CLI Web Services with REST APIs

Progress

• Slicer branch
• SlicerExecutionModel FindJsonCpp fix

Resources

• an SEM to HTML experiment