VTK
| Company type | Open-source software |
|---|---|
| Industry | Computer graphics, Visualization software |
| Founded | 1993 |
| Founder | Will Schroeder, Ken Martin, Bill Lorensen |
| Headquarters | United States |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Owner | Kitware |
| Website | vtk |
Functionality
VTK is a C++ class library equipped with interpreted bindings for Tcl/Tk, Java, and Python, and it is developed and supported by Kitware. It encompasses a wide range of visualization techniques, including scalar, vector, tensor, texture, and volumetric approaches, alongside sophisticated modeling methods such as implicit modeling, polygon decimation, mesh smoothing, cutting operations, contour extraction, and Delaunay triangulation. The toolkit offers a framework tailored for information visualization, interactive 3D widgets, parallel processing support, and compatibility with graphical user interface toolkits like Qt and Tk. As a cross-platform framework, VTK runs seamlessly on Linux, Windows, Mac OS, and Unix systems. Its foundational C++ design facilitates application creation through object composition, with automated wrappers enabling development in Python, Java, and Tcl environments.
History
Developed in 1993 to accompany the publication of The Visualization Toolkit: An Object-Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics by Will Schroeder, Ken Martin, and Bill Lorensen, VTK has remained under the stewardship of its original creators. The software was independently developed with authorization from General Electric. After its initial release, an international network of users and contributors enhanced VTK’s functionality for real-world applications.
The establishment of Kitware significantly accelerated VTK’s adoption across academic research and commercial industries. Prominent institutions such as Sandia National Laboratories, Livermore National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory sponsored development efforts and contributed additional modules. VTK plays a pivotal role in the 3DSlicer platform for biomedical computing and has been employed in processing extensive datasets—for instance, a 1024-processor installation at Los Alamos managed data volumes approaching a Petabyte.
Subsequently, VTK’s capabilities were broadened to include informatics data integration, processing, and visualization tasks, notably within Sandia’s 'Titan' initiative.
Criticism
A 2013 assessment focusing on visualization in radiotherapy highlighted that despite VTK’s robust capabilities and widespread use, it lacked certain functionalities such as multivolume rendering support, proprietary CUDA acceleration provided by NVidia, out-of-core rendering techniques, and native visualization of time-dependent volumetric datasets.
Since then, enhancements including the introduction of VTK-m have improved computational efficiency by leveraging libraries like Sandia’s Kokkos. Presently, VTK is incorporated into radiological imaging tools such as MEDInria and Starviewer, enabling sophisticated multi-volume (fusion) and time-resolved (phase) visualization features.
See also
Further reading
External links
- Kitware home page
- Visualization Toolkit (VTK) and official VTK Wiki
- ParaView and official ParaView Wiki
- PDF 9-page technical paper (with color images)
- Summary of VTK technical features
- vtk.js, JavaScript implementation of VTK
- Early history of VTK
- Articles with short description
- Computer vision software
- Free 3D graphics software
- Free science software
- Free software programmed in C++
- Free software programmed in Java (programming language)
- Free software programmed in Python
- Free software programmed in Tcl
- Software that uses Qt
- Software that uses Tk (software)
- Software using the BSD license
- Free data and information visualization software