VTK@CBA

This page is intended to serve as a small guide for people at CBA who wants to get started visualizing their data with VTK.

Useful information

• The version of VTK that is installed at CBA is VTK 4.2.
• The VTK libraries are located in /usr/local/lib/vtk/ and the include files are in /usr/local/include/vtk/.
• The VTK executables are /usr/local/bin/vtk for Tcl/Tk scripts, and /usr/local/bin/vtkpython for running python scripts (this is already in your path).
• Code examples, example data, and documentation files can be found in /usr/local/vtk/. The documentation is the same as on www.vtk.org, but it is very much faster since it is offline.
• Windows version: VTK is also installed on IPREN (upstairs) and TRIXIG (laptop) in C:\VTK.
• If you want to compile your own C++ code you should generate makefiles with CMake. CMake examines the file CMakeLists.txt to generate makefiles (or project) for the desired environment. On the Unix-system you can generate standard Unix makefiles, and on the Windows machines you can generate Borland makefiles or Visual C++ projects. See the C++ version of the isosurface example for an example on how to compile.
• The books VTK Textbook, VTK User's guide, and Mastering CMake are available at CBA.

VTK Examples

These are just small examples, see VTK.org for many more.

• Slicer example
  An example with a three-planar slicer (Tcl/Tk).
• Ray casting example
  An example including volume rendering of a protein (Python, Tcl/Tk).
• Isosurface example
  An example of how you can extract isosurfaces from your data (Python, Tcl/Tk, C++).

VTK File format

To be able to use VTK to visualize your own data you need to convert it to a VTK data set in some way. One (simple) way to do is to convert your files to the VTK file format. A description is available here: file-formats.pdf. If you want to convert raw image data to the VTK format (structured points), you can use this small C++ program: rawToVTK.cpp. If you use MATLAB you can use the functions readVTK.m and writeVTK.m to both read and write VTK structured points (binary).
In VTK you should use vtkStructuredPointsReader and vtkStructuredPointsWriter.

VTK Seminar slides

The seminar slides from 2004-09-20 is available here:

• vtk.ppt (Full presentation, PowerPoint)
• vtk.pdf (Note sheets, PDF)

VTK Links

• VTK.org
  The number one page for all VTK users. Browse this page! You will find everything from lecture notes to advanced code examples.
• MayaVi
  A VTK-based data visualizing program with a Tk-based graphical user interface. If you are curious about VTK, I can really recommend this!
• CMake
  Cross platform build tool.
• Python
  Python resources and documentation.
• Tcl/Tk
  Tcl/Tk resources and documentation.
  
• ITK.org
  The Insight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit. If you need more image processing and image analysis tools this is the package. Easy to combine with VTK.
• Kitware
  The corporation behind VTK, ITK, and CMake.