Documentation/4.4/Announcements

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4.4


Summary What is 3D Slicer Slicer 4.4 Highlights Slicer Training Slicer Extensions Other Improvements, Additions & Documentation

Summary

The community of Slicer developers is proud to announce the release of Slicer 4.4.

For the online documentation pages please click here.

  • Slicer 4.4 introduces
    • An improved App Store, known as the Extension Manager, for adding plug-ins to Slicer. More than 50 plug-ins and packages of plug-ins are currently available.
    • Close to 400 feature improvements and bug fixes have resulted in improved performance and stability.
    • Improvements to many modules.
  • Click here to download Slicer 4.4 for different platforms and find pointers to the source code, mailing lists and the bug tracker.
  • Please note that Slicer continues to be a research package and is not intended for clinical use. Testing of functionality is an ongoing activity with high priority, however, some features of Slicer are not fully tested.
  • The Slicer Training page provides a series of tutorials and data sets for training in the use of Slicer.

slicer.org is the portal to the application, training materials, and the development community.

What is 3D Slicer

3D Slicer is:

  • A software platform for the analysis (including registration and interactive segmentation) and visualization (including volume rendering) of medical images and for research in image guided therapy.
  • A free, open source software available on multiple operating systems: Linux, MacOSX and Windows
  • Extensible, with powerful plug-in capabilities for adding algorithms and applications.

Features include:

  • Multi organ: from head to toe.
  • Support for multi-modality imaging including, MRI, CT, US, nuclear medicine, and microscopy.
  • Bidirectional interface for devices.

There is no restriction on use, but Slicer is not approved for clinical use and intended for research. Permissions and compliance with applicable rules are the responsibility of the user. For details on the license see here

Slicer 4.4 Highlights

Slicer Training

The Slicer Training page provides a series of updated tutorials and data sets for training in the use of Slicer 4.4.


Slicer Extensions

Extensions removed

  • DataStore: The module is now bundled in the regular Slicer distribution.
  • PathPlanner and VisualLine: Module PathXplorer available in SlicerIGT extension provides similar functionality.
  • PlusRemote: Moved PlusRemote module under SlicerIGT extension. Because PlusRemote depends on SlicerIGT, and is always used together with the other SlicerIGT modules.
  • TransformVisualizer: The feature has been moved to the Slicer core. See Transforms module.

Extensions renamed

Other Improvements, Additions & Documentation

Optimization

  • Improved performance of the rendering pipeline by optimizing observations management
  • Reduced the memory footprint by fixing memory leaks
  • Reduced the size of the installer
  • Faster loading of the image stack (png, jpg, bmp, tiff...)

Rendering / Visualization

  • Added Multi-sampling option

CLI / SlicerExecutionModel

  • Improved CLI AutoRun by ensuring that the slice view is not reset when inputs are updated.
  • CLI input and output files are not removed when in developer mode
  • Reduced the chance of crashes when CLI returns result images

Python scripting

  • Added support for real Qt resources in Python (see r23290 for details).
  • Improved VTK event support by adding a way to specify the CallData type (see here for details).
  • Bundled pydicom python module into the Slicer package
  • Added helper methods to ScriptedLoadableModuleLogic for managing parameter nodes
  • SelfTest: Added the clickAndDrag() method to the scripted module construct. It allows to send synthetic mouse events to the widget specified (qMRMLSliceWidget or qMRMLThreeDView)
  • Improvements to the slicer.util python module.
    • Added modulePath(moduleName) method
    • Added resetThreeDViews/resetSliceViews
    • Added VTKObservationMixin
    • Added getFirstNodeByClassAndName()
    • Added NodeModify context manager: It allows to easily disable modified event associated with a node, and automatically re-enable them and invoking them if it applies.

Other

  • Help / Report a bug: Application error/warning/debug log messages are now saved to file. Added option to copy/paste log file contents of recent Slicer sessions to bug reports.

For Developers

Under the hood

  • Added support for user-defined stereo-viewing options
  • Build-system
    • Improved support for Visual Studio 2013
    • Refactored management of external project launcher settings. See r23724
    • Added option Slicer_ITKV3_COMPATIBILITY. This option enabled by default will allow (if disabled) to build Slicer with ITKv3 compatibility later disabled and ITK_USE_64BITS_IDS enabled.


Looking at the Code Changes

From a git checkout you can easily see the all the commits since the time of the 4.4.0 release:

git log v4.3.0..HEAD

To see a summary of your own commits, you could use something like:

git log v4.3.0..HEAD  --oneline --author=pieper

see the git log man page for more options.

Commit stats and full changelog

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