[Insight-users] ITK in Paraview Plugin

[Luis Ibanez]

Hi Christian,

Thanks for sharing the code.

After glancing at it,
it seems reasonable to expect a size of 9Mb for the library.


I was surprised to see that you are instantiating 1-D images.
ITK indeed supports ND-images, but we usually focus on 2D
and 3D.


Have you identified use cases for 1-D images in ParaView ?


    Thanks


          Luis


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 5:23 AM, Christian Werner
<christian.werner at rwth-aachen.de> wrote:
> Hmm, the vtkITKImageBox does contain instantiations for ALL pixel types.
> This is because I have to make sure that I create a correkt itk ImageType
> for each vtkImageData input (1-3 Scalar Components, 1-3 Dimensions, 10
> different Scalar Types). That image box is about 9 MB big, but it is a
> shared library anyway...
>
> The filters who use this box however also include code that checks the
> vtkImageData and setup an appropriate ImageType. Then they instantiate a
> corresponding ImageBox<ImageType>. Maybe this way the compiler generates all
> different kind of class headers for the vtkITKImageBox, but I don't see how
> this could justify 7MB...
>
> Since I am not a professional programmer I don't know much about "Modern C++
> programming", or generic programming. I had problems with the linker telling
> me about not finding any reference to specific template functions, because
> the compiler did not instantiate them. So I just brutally "forced" the
> compiler to make all instantiations (actually instanitiate each class type
> and call all its methods explicitly in some dummy code). I think what I am
> missing here is some understanding about how to do that dynamically... ?
> On the other hand I have to decide at runtime what ImageType I need for the
> ITK Filtering because I don't know what vtkImageData I get as input. So this
> verification has to be implemented in every single filter and the
> appropriate functions with the corresponding ImageType from the
> vtkITKImageBox have to exist at this point.
>
> If you take a look at my code you will see what I mean. The good thing is
> that I can use Gaetans Labling/Analysis filtering right out of Paraview now
> for any kind of image data, and that is what I needed. I actually don't care
> if it is this big, though I really would have liked to create something more
> professional. But since this is only a very tiny little part of my work,
> which already took much more time then planned, I cannot sacrifice more time
> on that.
>
> If you (or maybe somebody else) knows how to improve that, please tell me. I
> could dive into this again when I have made progress in my actual project
> and won back some of the time.
>
>
> Best regards,
> Christian
>
>
>
>
> Luis Ibanez wrote:
>>
>> Hi Christian,
>>
>> Thanks for letting us know.
>>
>> The size of the filter seems to be large indeed.
>>
>> Does it include instantiations for several different pixel types ?
>>
>> As a reference, a typical executable example of ITK is about 300K.
>> (when using a single pixel type).
>>
>> The VolviewPlugins, on the other hand range in size from
>> 1Mb to 5.3Mb. (They include instantiation for 9 different pixel
>> types).
>>
>> If you run them through "strip" they get about 25% to 30% smaller.
>> (e.g. a pluging whose shared library was 2.7M gets down to 2.0Mb).
>>
>> --
>>
>> BTW: You mention some code, I seem to have missed your
>> email with an attachment, or with instructions on how to download
>> it.  If the code is available, I will be happy to give it a try.
>>
>>
>>
>>      Regards,
>>
>>
>>             Luis
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------
>> On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 4:36 PM, Christian Werner
>> <christian.werner at rwth-aachen.de> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> It works now when I use TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES, I just did not do it
>>> correctly (I did not provide the lib that is actually build!). Strange
>>> though that the compiler did not seem to care.
>>>
>>> There is one issue which is still somewhat annoying. Every Paraview-ITK
>>> filter is now very big (like 7MB). I do not understand why, but that is
>>> really huuuuge! I tried reducing this by moving all the exporter/importer
>>> related code from the ImageBox header into the .cxx code, but that just
>>> made
>>> a difference of a view hundred byte.! It didn't work this way either...
>>>
>>> This is really strange, I was so happy that I was able to make the
>>> vtkITKImageBox a shared library and thought that would reduce the size of
>>> the plugins to "normal" levels. In a VTK-only environment these filters
>>> get
>>> as big, by the way.
>>>
>>> Maybe if you take a look at the code I sent you, you can make out the
>>> reason
>>> for this? I am not sure if the commutiy is glad about being able to
>>> easily
>>> use ITK Filters in Paraview-Plugins when they are this big...
>>>
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Christian
>>>