# VTK Memory Management

**URL:** https://discourse.vtk.org/t/vtk-memory-management/4820
**Category:** Development
**Created:** [December 14, 2020, 7:00pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/vtk-memory-management/4820 "2020-12-14T19:00:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![dporter](https://discourse.vtk.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@dporter](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/dporter)
#### Post date: [December 14, 2020, 7:00pm UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/vtk-memory-management/4820/1 "2020-12-14T19:00:01Z")

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Good morning, could someone direct me to documentation on VTK memory management. How do you handle large image sets and processing without special hardware?

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### Author: ![Keyn](https://discourse.vtk.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/858c86/32.png) [@Keyn](https://discourse.vtk.org/u/Keyn)
#### Post date: [December 15, 2020, 9:50am UTC](https://discourse.vtk.org/t/vtk-memory-management/4820/2 "2020-12-15T09:50:42Z")

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Hello Doug,

for generell memory management take a look at the smart pointer tutorial, which helped me a lot when starting with VTK:  
[https://vtk.org/Wiki/VTK/Tutorials/SmartPointers](https://vtk.org/Wiki/VTK/Tutorials/SmartPointers)

Additionally, the VTK FAQ page has a section for handling large data sets:  
[https://vtk.org/Wiki/VTK/FAQ#How\_to\_handle\_large\_data\_sets\_in\_VTK](https://vtk.org/Wiki/VTK/FAQ#How_to_handle_large_data_sets_in_VTK)

Hope this helps.