[IGSTK-Developers] Review board meeting minutes are attached

[Stephen R. Aylward]

Great meeting notes.   They are dense with ideas!

I regret that I cannot attend the tcon on Thursday - I am in CA giving a 
talk.

So, I wanted to share two thoughts Julien and I had:

About the state machines having dense tables - it struck me that we 
(okay, mainly ya'll) have now spent a multitude of hours talking about 
something that, based the code that we reviewed yesterday, would only 
result in 30 additional lines.   Even if having a dense table requires 
30-100 additional lines per class, we only have 8-10 major classes that 
users will typically address, and we all agree that these are not 
difficult lines of code to write.   I admit that the impact on other 
programmers is important, but 300-1000 lines of code in a surgical 
guidance package is relatively insignificant, and those lines are 
conceptually simple and consistent with the rest of the package. 
Breaking that consistency would be more detrimental, in my opinion. 
Furthermore, using this single design pattern will simplify testing, 
documentation, description, etc.

Again - the serialcomm/tracker classes might be an exception to this 
rule and other rules.   But those classes should be the exception - we 
should not change the design philosophy of the entire package based on 
their odd situation of having a very exposed/complex API.  It would be 
great if future discussions could be focused on classes other than the 
tracker and serial comm classes.

Reminds me of our initial template discussions for ITK...those 
discussions occasionally left me with the same feeling that I was being 
more disruptive than helpful, but I do truly believe that we would 
benefit the community and the toolkit in the long run by making patient 
safety be a conscious thought in every programmers mind when dealing 
with surgical guidance.  Just like ITK forces you to write code for ND 
images and arbitrary pixel types...we eventually resolved some cool 
methods for simplifying the process...I am certain the same will occur 
for state machines in this toolkit.

Stephen



Kevin Cleary wrote:
>  
> Hi everyone:
> 
> Attached are the minutes from the review board meeting on Thursday
> 
> Separately I will follow up with the minutes of the project participants
> from Thursday night and Friday (major conclusion then was that Rocklands BBQ
> is good! (inside joke))
> 
> We will then review these and the action plan for year 2 during the tcon
> next Thursday
> 
> I want to thank Will, Peter, and Terry for their participation on Thursday
> and their valuable comments
> 
> I think the project is on track and we have a strong team
> 
> Obviously the defining feature is the state machine formalism and the
> question is how to best incorporate it without getting carried away
> 
> We also want to produce a toolkit that is as easy to use as possible while
> keeping in mind the safety issues of clinical applications
> 
> Any additional feedback or comments are welcome and thanks again to everyone
> for their support!
> 
> Kevin
> 
> P.S. I will also put a copy of this (minus the funding comments at the
> front) on the IGSTK Wiki
>   
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> Kevin Cleary, Ph.D.                        Work phone: 202-687-8253
> Associate Professor                        Work fax: 202-784-3479
> Deputy Director  
>                             
> Imaging Science and Information Systems (ISIS) Center
> Department of Radiology                    Pager: 202-901-2033
> Georgetown University Medical Center       Cell phone: 202-294-3409
> 2115 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 603           Home phone: 301-299-0788
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>  
> ISIS center: www.isis.georgetown.edu
> Research group: www.caimr.georgetown.edu
> WashCAS: www.washcas.org
> Email: cleary at georgetown.edu
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-- 
===========================================================
Dr. Stephen R. Aylward
Associate Professor of Radiology
Adjunct Associate Professor of Computer Science and Surgery
http://caddlab.rad.unc.edu
aylward at unc.edu
(919) 966-9695