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Hello Wonderfull IRAF People!I just ran across a nice package for use on RS6000, SGI, SPARC & various
supercomputer architectures for performing volume rendering and numerous
other 3D data manipulation functions. Since IRAF's 3D volume rendering
code was on the back burner the last time I checked I thought you might
be interested in looking into perhaps adding better FITS I/O code to the
NCSA Viewit package (which is explicitly public domain so you could also
incorporate it into IRAF). Better FITS support in NCSA Viewit would make
the entire set of NCSA 3D X11R5 GUI based tools available to IRAF users.
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* Recipe for Using Public Domain 3D Volume Imaging Code -- NCSA Viewit *
------------------------------------------------------------------------If you have a SUN SPARC workstation/server with >250M free memory
available (that's free memory -- not available disk space) then you
can use NCSA's Viewit (NMR Imaging and Spectroscopy Package) to do
3d volumetric imaging at full resolution of the UNC CHVRTD datasets.
The following SUN SPARC recipe displays multiple views of a 3D head.SUN SPARC Recipe: get any X11R5 (or maybe X11R4) server running on myhost --
this is where you are going to display images -- rlogin to
bighost -- this is where you will need the free memory for
storing intermediate results during the volume rendering. myhost(96): rlogin bighost -l myusername
bighost(1): ftp -i ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu
ftp> cd misc/viewit/viewit.v3.13
ftp> binary
ftp> get viewit.sparc-version.Z
ftp> get viewit.help
ftp> quit
bighost(2): zcat viewit.sparc-version.Z >viewit
bighost(3): chmod 755 viewit
bighost(4): ftp -i omicron.cs.unc.edu
ftp> cd pub/softlab/CHVRTD/volI
ftp> binary
ftp> get 3dhead
ftp> quit
bighost(5): dd if=3dhead of=3dhead.s conv=swab
bighost(6): viewit
viewit(tcl)> -dim 3 256 256 109 -iformat RAW -itype USHORT -i 3dhead.s
viewit(tcl)> -scale 1.0 1.0 2.3486 -reorder 2 0 1 -push
viewit(tcl)> -dim 1 90 -ramp -1 1 -linscl 0 356 -xchg
viewit(tcl)> -movie 0.0 add no_erode
viewit(tcl)> -linscl 0 255
viewit(tcl)> -displ X myhost
bighost(7): exit
myhost(97): logoutThis may not be the most efficient recipe -- but it does give you some
initial idea about the capabilities of NCSA's viewit 3d imaging tools.If you have a smaller workstation you can still do some limited volume
rendering -- but you will have to subsample the original 3D dataset to
reduce swapping to disk to a reasonable level. Please see NCSA viewit documentation or online help for more a detailed
explanation of the purpose of each command in this recipe.------------------------------------------------------------------------Many thanks to Clint Potter, C. D. Gregory, Rachael Brady, Patrick Moran,
Jeff Terstriep, David Lawrence, Zei-Pei Liang, and any other contributors
I may have missed in the documentation for giving this code to the public.Compiled binary executables are available for RS6000, SGI and SPARC boxes.
Full source code is provided to make new modifications and ports possible.These tools read/write most RAW binary, FITS & HDF files. They can also
be used in conjunction with other X11R5 GUI / HDF based tools available
in the NCSA suite of 2D & 3D image analysis packages. The FITS output
code could probably use contributed work to achieve machine independence.A viewit electronic newsletter is distributed on an irregular basis --
email to viewit@ncsa.uiuc.edu to request a subscription. Clint Potter
(the original author and pricipal contact) is at cpotter@ncsa.uiuc.edu.------------------------------------------------------------------------Alexander-James Annala
Principal Investigator
Neuroscience Image Analysis Network
HEDCO Neuroscience Building, Fifth Floor
University of Southern California
University Park
Los Angeles, CA 90089-2520Telephone: (213)740-3406
FAX: (213)740-5687
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