Dissemination:Jan10 Meeting Utah

Visit to U Utah Jan 10, 2005

1. We followed approximately the following agenda:
   1. 1:30-2pm: informal discussion with Tom Fletcher about his Ph.D. work at UNC and planned work at Utah, and role as the main contact for NAMIC at Utah.
   2. 2-3pm: Met with Ross Whitaker, Tom Fletcher, and Josh Cates and gave an overview of activities using the NAMIC Wiki.
   3. 3-4pm: Josh presented some of the work done at Utah in segmentation and level set frameworks within ITK.
   4. 4-5pm Tom presented his work on non-linear statistical analysis which will be applied to DTI data for NAMIC.
   5. 5-6pm: Met with a student and a research faculty member, Oleg P., and learned about their research in implementing algorithms using GPUs and surface registration.This was not related to NAMIC but interesting to hear about.
   6. 6-6:30pm: Met with Greg Jones, showed him the Wiki, and updated him on the dissemination efforts and discussions with the training core. He will be attending the AHM in Feb.
2. Tom is the contact person for NAMIC at Utah. His goal for year 1 of NAMIC is to work with UNC to ensure that the infrastructural support he needs for his non-linear statistical classification of DTI data is available in ITK.
3. Josh is not currently on NAMIC but is one of the key contributors to ITK. His current research project is in tomographic reconstruction, and he will likely be adding support for that in ITK.
4. Ross brought up the idea of having a working meeting for the DTI group at the AHM, which was reinforced at the meeting at UNC later in the week, and since then we have set it up.
5. Participation at upcoming events:
   1. Josh is looking into attending Jan 24-25 workshop at MIT. He is also a good candidate for giving a detailed technical talk on the level set framework available within ITK.
   2. Tom is looking into attending Feb 17-18 workshop at UCSD
   3. Ross is looking into sending a few students to Feb 17-18 workshop
   4. Ross open to sending a person to SPL for a month or so over the summer, and to hosting a NAMIC student with common interests (couple names came up: Raul, Christian)
   5. Everyone open to the idea of a week-long programmers retreat in Boston over the summer
6. Some questions/comments came up for the Slicer team:
   1. Can feedback be provided to the user at intermediate stages of a routine? For example, several apps need to provide user with the results after every few iterations of segmentation/registration, rather than just the final one. (My impression is that it is expensive in VTK and hence in Slicer to do this, but that it can be/is done.)
   2. During the rearchitecture/refactoring, is it possible to target several lightweight end-user applications rather than a monolithic solution? This is along the lines of the work that Steve has done on the Slicer, but perhaps needs to be discussed at the next workshop.
   3. We should look at how other visuzliation programs such as Analyze, and Volview Interface with ITK, and incorporate the strengths into Slicer, as possible.
   4. What support is currently available in Slicer for DTI?
   5. What support is available to Utah to integrate DTI modules into Slicer? Does it make sense that after Utah has some DTI modules ready in ITK, integration into Slicer takes place during the "student exchange" period over the summer?
7. A planned project between Utah and UNC that will also be beneficial to the NAMIC team is that Utah is planning on creating a DTI toolkit using ITK and UNC is planning on using it.