best practices:MainPage
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This tutorial is past of the MICCAI 2010 meeting. See it's details at: http://www.miccai2010.org/
This tutorial is entitled: Best Practices for Software Development in the Imaging Community: Users and Developers Unite!
Date: TBD, either Sept 20th or 24th.
Contents |
Outline
Scientific meetings are often bursting with the latest findings that advance the overall knowledge of the individual researchers involved in specific research topics. What is under-addressed, however, is the necessary details (infrastructure, techniques, resources, etc.) necessary to promote excellent ideas and advances from one investigator to the remainder of the community. In many cases, such advances are embodied in software applications; and the scientific community is, at times, woefully under-educated in the methods of software development and dissemination. This tutorial session is designed to provide developers and users a baseline understanding of methods and tools available to promote good software development practice, including software engineering and userbase interactions. The faculty includes experts in software dissemination and developers with long standing track records in community software development. The session will include presentations, community dialog and open demo sessions. Topics that will be addressed by all developers include best practices for: software testing, documentation, user communication, open file standards, meaningful error/warning messages, and tools/techniques for quality control/assessment.
Organizer
David N. Kennedy, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Psychiatry Director, Division of Neuroinformatics University of Massachusetts Medical School Biotech One, Suite 100 365 Plantation Street Worcester, MA 01605 David.Kennedy@umassmed.edu
Academic Objectives
The tutorial attendee will receive a state of the art, detailed update on the following topics:
- Methods for open source software development
- Methods for software distribution, including licensing issues
- Techniques for software validation
- Techniques for user interactions (documentation, tutorials, feedback/communication, etc.)
- Resources for finding existing relevant software projects.
Format Plans
This tutorial in planned for the half-day format (3 hours). This session will be lead by four 25 minute presentations by Drs. Luo/Kennedy (Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and Resources Clearinghouse: NITRC); Dr. Tao (3D Slicer3 extension modules concept and implementation); Dr. Landman (Java Image Science Toolkit: JIST) and Drs. Zhang/Yushkevich (open-source development projects ITK-SNAP & DTI-TK). This will be followed by a 30 minute panel discussion with questions from the audience. The final aspect of the tutorial will be a 50 minute open demo session (concurrent with coffee/tea service) where live presentations of each of the 4 presented software development projects will be on display to review specific implementation details for audience participation.
Anticipated Number of Participants
Virtually all MICAAI attendees are developers or users of advanced software systems. Thus, the scope of this tutorial can touch upon developers (looking for best practices and resources for better software development) and users (looking to find and optimize their experience with various software packages) alike. However, we anticipate that a manageable number (30-40), principally post docs and junior faculty, will commit to a half-day session dedicated to these issues. This sub-group has the most to gain with respect to their personal careers to break in to the software market (using good development practices) and efficiently find the necessary, well-supported resources to assist their ongoing research. Good software development promotes the careers of both the developers (through better community adoptions of their work) and the users (who can do better research by utilizing resources that track with the cutting edge of their field).
Invited Speakers (all have tentatively accepted)
Xiaodong Tao, Ph.D. Computer Scientist GE Global Research Center Imaging Technologies taox@research.ge.com
Bennett Landman, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Electrical Engineering Vanderbilt University Institute of Image Science bennett.landman@vanderbilt.edu
Gary Hui Zhang, Ph.D. PICSL, Department of Radiology University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine 3600 Market Street, Suite 320 Philadelphia, PA 19104 huiz@seas.upenn.edu
Paul A. Yushkevich, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Penn Image Computing and Science Laboratory Department of Radiology University of Pennsylvania pauly2@mail.med.upenn.edu
James Luo, Ph.D. Program Director, Biomedical Informatics Programs National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering NIH 6707 Democracy Blvd, Suite 200, Bethesda, MD 20892 luoja@mail.nih.gov
Requirements
Lecture room for 30-40 participants. Computer projection w/ internet access for lecture session. Four demo stations: presenters will being their own computer, station should provide large screen monitor, poster board and internet connectivity should be provided for each station.
Dissemination
The organizers and presenters of this tutorial will provide information and resources supporting their presentations to the community using the Neuroimaging Informatics Tools and Resources Clearinghouse (NITRC: www.nitrc.org). NITRC provides a forum that extends the impact of the tutorial and it’s material in time and audience. Collected best-practices manuscripts will be invited for publication in the journal Neuroinformatics (see http://www.nitrc.org/projects/nein/).
