VTK for imaging application

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1

Hi all, I was hoping someone could tell me if this is the correct direction to go in for visualizing my data in VTK. I’m pretty familiar with different types of data visualization techniques, but only recently started playing around with VTK in python.

So here’s my application. I have an imaging device near the end of a robotic manipulator. It captures images at regularly spaced spatial increments along a path while the robotic end effector does a thing (the imaging device is meant to watch the thing). With each image, I have the global coordinates of the tool point and the orientation of the imaging device in 3D space. Knowing this and the geometry of the surface it is imaging, I’ve written algorithms that will translate and transform the image data so I can correlate each pixel value with a 3D coordinate. I have written things to visualize this data, but many of my datasets are quite large and there is a struggle to render the entire dataset at once.

Looking at VTK, I’m considering formatting my data into an unstructured grid .vtk format and then using the python wrappers for VTK to visualize the data. Is this correct way to go? When I format the data to an unstructured grid, can I save myself some time/memory and write it as a VTK_VERTEX cell type and set the pixel value as the point value, or should I use the VTK_PIXEL cell type and regenerate 4 3D coordinates for each pixel? I guess you could consider the transformed data sets as point cloud representation of a volume, is there a better way to represent this in VTK?

Thank you for your time

2

There have been many similar projects in the past that used VTK, so there is a good chance that you could successfully use and extend VTK to fulfill your needs. If you need more specific advice than this then we would need to know a bit more about your application.

For example, if you attach an ultrasound imaging device to reconstruct 3D volumes for medical interventions then I could help. If you use a surface scanner or an optical camera, or other imaging devices then there are other domain experts who could give you advice. It would be also important to know what would you like to achieve. What to display, for what purposes, with what constraints.