ITK: The Insight Toolkit

Insight Toolkit (ITK), also known as Insight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit, is an open-source, cross-platform library that provides developers with an extensive suite of software tools for image analysis. Developed through extreme programming methodologies, ITK builds on a proven, spatially-oriented architecture for processing, segmentation, and registration of scientific images in two, three, or more dimensions. The goals for ITK include:

Establish a foundation for future, reproducible research.
Create a repository of fundamental algorithms.
Develop a platform for advanced product development.
Support commercial application of the technology.
Create conventions for future work.
Support education in scientific image analysis.
Grow a self-sustaining community of software users and developers

Segmentation is the process of identifying and classifying data found in a digitally sampled representation. Typically the sampled representation is an image acquired from such medical instrumentation as CT or MRI scanners. Registration is the task of aligning or developing correspondences between data. For example, in the medical environment, a CT scan may be aligned with a MRI scan in order to combine the information contained in both.

ITK was originally created to analyze 3D images from the Visible Human Project of the National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. ITK is now widely applied across medical imaging, microscopy, and remote sensing domains. ITK is actively developed by a community of research software engineers from around the world. The ITK project uses an open governance model and is fiscally sponsored by NumFOCUS. You are welcomed to visit the Insight Software Consortium website to learn about the bylaws that govern ITK.