VINCI Version History

Vinci 1.52.0, May 14 2004

• OrthoDisplay: TitleLine - now features a spin control on the left hand side next to the OrthoDisplay's name ("A", "B", etc.) for cycling to the next and previous image buffers, resp. This is useful for viewing frames of a multi-frame series in a movie-like fashion (images are rendered "on-the-fly") to get an initial idea about patient movement, registration accuracy, differences in tracer uptake, etc.
• LoadProject - loading of images from slow storage devices or networks should now give better visual feedback.

• LoadView - a multi-selection of files in VPickFile caused Vinci to crash in a (futile) attempt to load the selected files simultaneously due to a fault in the new threading logic. FIXED.
• LoadView: Analyze PlugIn - switching to the Analyze PlugIn after loading a HRRT image file caused Vinci to crash. FIXED.
• LoadView: HRRT PlugIn - loading a HRRT image via a Vinci project file caused the message "LoadView: Initialization failed" in certain circumstances. FIXED.
• ScriptDemo: ROI Demo - due to casting in-accuracies (double to integer and back again) 60 rotations of 1.5 degrees each led to 96.1 degrees in sum instead of the expected 90.0 since Vinci 1.45.0. FIXED.

Vinci 1.51.0, May 12 2004

• VPickFile - improved user interface for deletion of files. We have also added a shortcut for removing files: <Delete>.

• LoadView - when loading a Vinci project, Vinci tried first to obtain status information from the last file of the Load history before loading the first image file specified in the project. This caused warning messages in the log if the file from the Load History was of a different type than the image file of the project. FIXED.
• VPickFile
  • Refresh - did not force re-reading of a directory in certain circumstances. FIXED.
  • Date/Time - was not reliably refreshed if a file (of a cached directory) was changed during a Vinci session. FIXED.
  • Network Directories - were read twice before VPickFile's internal cache was used. FIXED.
• File Handles - some routines did not close all file handles (when no longer needed) during a Vinci session. Thus some image files appeared to be locked (but readable). FIXED.

Vinci 1.50.0, May 11 2004

• Load Analyze - now also has multi-frame support for the Analyze file format.
• Multi-frame conversion of HRRT images to ECAT7 format - we added an "auto-mapping" mode for frames and some improvements to the user interface. Use File:Automate:Multi-Frame Conversion to access it.
• Undo/Redo now also works for Creation of InfoView by menu.
• ROI Report - TAC: will now handle missing frames (inconsistent ECAT header information) more gracefully and use all the frames that are available.

• Creation of InfoView by menu complained about ProtocolYourself being an unknown xml-tag. FIXED.
• If you released the left mouse button while leaving the OrthoDisplay Vinci did not insert Undo/Redo entries into the protocol in certain circumstances. FIXED.
• ScriptDemo - TAC Demo did not end correctly since Vinci 1.49.0. FIXED.
• ROI Report - TAC: TAC had a memory leak when handling missing frames (inconsistent ECAT header information). FIXED.

Vinci 1.49.1, May 07 2004

• Save/Load - loading and saving of images has been improved in terms of visual feedback and speed: in interactive mode we now use threads (no more "dead" windows during a load or save operation), block sizes for fast, unbuffered IO have been optimized.
• Load HRRT image - massive changes for support of multi-frame series (similar to multi-frame support for ECAT7 images). Please note: HRRT frames are zero-based, ECAT7 frames are one-based. In contrast to multi-frame ECAT7, MINC and Analyze files, HRRT multi-frame data is represented in one file per frame. Vinci parses the file names for frame ids, e.g. patientname_OSEM3D_more_information_frame5_abc_it2.i for frame 5 (all files of a multi-frame series must only differ in the frame<i> parameter, Vinci will look for the last occurence of either "frame" or "fr" followed by a number).
  • Frame mode: single - this corresponds to the previous implementation: one file is loaded (also applies to image data that is not part of a multi-frame image series).
  • Frame mode: range - use this mode to load a range of images, e.g. frames 3 to 5.
  • Frame mode: sum - this mode creates one image by summing a range of image files.
• Save ECAT7 - large parts have been rewritten for better support of multi-frame files, improved speed and visual feedback (progress report).
  • Filename/Directory - this part of the widget is now more suited for long path names. In addition to the previous "_rsl"-feature (adding an optional "_rsl" tag to the file name) you can now also tags with keywords (<frame>, <image>) which will be replaced when a file is saved. Force Directory will keep the currently displayed directory even if you select a new image (with a different "native" path).
  • Replace Frame Option - if not selected, Vinci will delete any previous file(s) and overwrite them with new data. Using this option, you can replace one or more frame(s) of an existing ECAT7 multi-frame file. Vinci will only replace a frame if the old frame has the same dimensions as the new one.
  • Frame Number(s) - of ECAT7 frames can be: (a) set automatically to the current frame number of the image (default: keep original number); (b) reset to 1: for each new file (in multi-file mode), the first ECAT frame will have id 1; (c) using an offset: the first ECAT frame will have the number specified here.
  • image buffer menus have replaced the previous dropdown lists; if new images are loaded or image buffers are deleted/cleared, changes will be reflected immediately in the menus.
• Multi-frame conversion of HRRT images to ECAT7 format is now much faster and gives much better feedback of progress. You can also now specify an offset for ECAT7 frames: by default, Vinci will map a range of HRRT frames to ECAT7 frames so that the first ECAT frame number is one. Use File:Automate:Multi-Frame Conversion to access it.

• OrthoView: cycle images - this version introduces a new shortcut for cycling through all images of a project: move the mouse over an OrthoDisplay and press either "+" or "-" to switch to the next or previous image buffer, resp. Nice suggestion, Johnny.
• PickFile - using the new icons in the top right corner, you can now create directories and delete files.
• LogView - large parts of the log engine have been redesigned: it is much leaner and efficient, giving faster feedback.
• HRRT and MicroPET sinograms are shown with color display minimum equal to its data volume's globale minimum. All other images are set to a color display minimum of 0.0 as before.
• Images known to have float values: integral image values at mouse position will be displayed with appended ".0" in the OrthoDisplay info line now to indicate the inherent floating point nature of the data.
• Images known to have integer values: the labels of the color legend will no longer carry an appended ".0".
• Images with constant value 0.0 now get a normal color legend ranging from 0.0 to 1.0 instead of an all-black one without value range.
• Undo/Redo now also works for
  • Creation of OrthoView by menu;
  • Creation of PlanesView by menu;
  • Creation of SaveView by menu.

• SaveView displayed the error message "wrong parameter" if you loaded an image with incorrect patient "day of birth" in image buffer zero. FIXED.
• A PlanesView - re-created from Vinci project file - did show a slightly altered cut plane. FIXED.
• VPickFile - in certain circumstances the Refresh-button did not work reliably. FIXED.

Vinci 1.49.0, April 29 2004

Internal pre-Release to Vinci 1.49.0

Vinci 1.48.0, April 22 2004

• Vinci Options - ROI selection by area: you can now optionally select a ROI by clicking within its area (instead of clicking on the outline) - similar to the implementation of Vinci annotation objects. Your choice will be saved in the Windows registry.
• Vinci Options - self-intersection of polygon ROIs: Vinci now optionally accepts a self-intersecting polygon ROI.

• MMM registration setups: A new set of setups has been predefined. They are based on the results of our validation tests and on the experience and requirements of our users. For more information see Vinci's Online Help (F1).
• MMM multi-threaded: The most time consuming parts of the registration algorithm have been re-implemented in a multi-threaded fashion. By default, the number of computational threads is equal to the number of available processors. You can change the number of used threads by pressing the switch "Job Queue Control" and then "Options".

• Load ECAT7: mode "sum" - when summing frames of an ECAT7 multi-frame file, Vinci will now use the relative start time of the first frame to be summed and the accumulated frame duration of all frames (in the selection) in the resulting image's headers. FIXED.
• ROI Define Tool - statistics update - changing back from Paint outside to Paint inside or Paint border did not update the statistics. FIXED.
• MMM: Switching between registration setups caused scrambling of preprocessing parameters in some cases. FIXED.
• Color Tool - color palette synchronization: A changed palette got not immediately redrawn in a second color tool that showed the same image buffer. FIXED.

Vinci 1.47.0, April 19 2004

• VPickFile (major update)
  • Caching - VPickFile now keeps a record of the contents of the last 10 directories you have visited. If you re-open one of the cached directories, the selection box should now appear instantly which is a very useful feature for network directories with many files. As VPickFile subscribes to a Windows' system service to be notified about changes in selected directories (resulting in an automatic refresh of the file list), the displayed file list should be rarely out of date (to make sure that the file list reflects the current state you can press the "Refresh" button). A directory cache will expire after 1 hour, i.e. if the file list for a cached directory has not been updated for longer than that period, a refresh will be scheduled automatically next time you open it. Caching can be switched off in VPickFile's options dialog.
  • "Use defaults" button in VPickFile's options dialog
  • auto completion of file names now also works for sub directories when typing in the edit field: taking into account the current directory, VPickFile will display all files starting with "abc" of directory "xyz" in case of "abc\xyz".
  • Several automated tests to improve reliability and robustness.
• new color palette "16 level/black" similar to the IDL color table of the same name
• Save Project: <ProjectInfo> - an optional text block (XML) in a Vinci project file. Several options in the SaveProject widget (use the "more options" switch) determine what information will be written.
  • Description - only used if the edit field contains text
  • Verbose - adds <TimeStamp> and <OriginalFilename>.
  • SessionInfo - adds <Username>, <Host>, <StartSession>, <PrimaryScreenSize>.
• ScriptDemo - its main window is now always in front of other windows; better integration with Vinci (will close if associated Vinci session is closed, will avoid a second instance if another demo is already running).
• info.xml - this distribution specific file (in Vinci's bin-directory) can now contain several options and restrictions (e.g. disabling certain plugins which are currently unsuitable for usage outside MPIFNF).
• Undo/Redo now also works for
  • Creation and Change of OrthoTools
  • Creation of LoadView
  • Loading of Images - if you reload several images of different type the LoadView will change appropriately.
  • Creation of LogView by menu.
  • Creation of PlotsView by menu.
• Vinci Options - OrthoView - You now have the option to save the OrthoView mouse mode in the Vinci project file again. The setting of the option itself will also be saved in the Vinci project file.
• ECAT7 InfoView
  • frame start time and frame duration of the ECAT7 image header will be displayed in ms and minutes.
  • patient date of birth will be displayed with year, month and day only.
  • dose start time will be displayed with as date/time string.

• Report Tool - TAC: image files were not found in certain circumstances. FIXED.
• Re-Setting Vinci Options did delete the registry entry of default project file. An empty project was loaded from there on. FIXED.
• LogView - cosmetics: clearing (deleting) the LogView caused inconsistent text styles with subsequent text output. FIXED.
• OrthoView - Moving Cross did sometimes appear on Vinci startup. FIXED.
• PlanesView - Image Slot Properties crashed if you pressed the "Show" check box to display a slot with empty image buffer. FIXED.
• Load HRRT image - the header format of HRRT images has changed with the new software rebinner. In particular, the new "image relative start time" tag is now interpreted correctly. This caused a "frame start time" of 0 for previous releases of Vinci and thus also affected multi-frame conversion to ECAT7 format. FIXED.
• SaveECAT7 - scanstarttime of ECAT7 main header was not always saved correctly (problems only affected hour, minute and second parts of the date). FIXED.
• VPickFile - in multi-selection mode (opening image files) selecting a file from the file list by single mouse click copied the name to the edit field. When subsequently clicking into the edit field, the edit field was cleared. FIXED.
• Splashscreen (Vinci logo with license information) did not close automatically in certain cases. FIXED.

Vinci 1.46.0, April 15 2004

pre-Release for NeuroPET CD-ROM supplement

Vinci 1.45.0, April 01 2004

• ROI Report - TAC
  • ROIs with vertical extent - the new field "ROI width (+/- cuts)" [(+/- planes) if in TruePixel mode] allows for statistics on ROIs with depth.
    The plane difference is identical to the default plane separation of a PlanesView in single slot mode i.e. the original pixel size in the direction vertical to the plane shown on the corresponding OrthoPart (rotation(s) taken into account). Thus the planes around the cross marker on a PlanesView of the ROI's OrthoPart correspond exactly to the cuts used in the computation.
  • New MS Excel Template - displays ROI width and its type as "+/- Cuts" or "+/- Planes" (this feature was already available for writing of native OpenOffice spreadsheets).
  • Image Frames are loaded only once now - the main loop over all ROIs has been exchanged by a loop over all frames.
  • Patlak compatible output (MPI internal) - with the new output format Patlak compatible (*.CPT) you can generate text files (file names differ by ROI name) for each selected ROI which can be read in by the IDL program patlak.
  • Reference image file vs. multi-frame image file - for non-Patlak output you can ignore the distinction as both files will be matched automatically. In Patlak output, ROIs are usually defined on the sum image (image that is the sum of all frames) which will be chosen as the reference image. The TAC computation will then be done on the multi-frame image file.
• ROI Define Tool
  • The ROI volume is now computed with the same plane separation as used in the TAC tool which is also the default plane separation of PlanesView in single slot mode (see "ROIs with vertical extent" above). The plane difference is shown in the tool now.
  • The Bounding Box is now computed from the unrotated ROI, i.e. for a rectangular ROI the real width and height of the rectangle will be shown.
  • Inverse ROIs and ROI Filling - ROI statistics can now be computed outside the boundary of the ROI. ROIs can now be shown outlined or filled, this is useful for masking parts of an image (for publication).
  • ROI evaluation can now optinally be switched off for individual ROIs. It will automatically be switched off for inverse ROIs to accelerate their handling.
  • Inverse ROIs and ROI Filling - ROI statistics can now be computed outside the boundary of the ROI. ROIs can be shown outlined or filled now.
  • ROI Selection & Rotation Angle set in the tool can be undone and redone i.e. will be set in Vinci tests.
  • ROI pixel-list tests - new tests have been added to our daily test-runs to assure the consistency of pixel lists associated with ROIs (which form the basis of all ROI calculations).
• ROI Sets: Import & Export - a new button in the ROI Define Tool will open a dialog for importing and exporting sets of ROIs. When you first open the dialog it shows the ROIs selected on the current OrthoDisplay. Using the Export-button you can write them into a text-file (XML). The Import-Button opens a file browser: you can select a file with previously exported ROIs to restore them into the current OrthoDisplay.

• Vinci Projects
  • ProjectInfo - several new XML tags will be written at the top of each Vinci project file in the ProjectInfo block: a summary of all files needed for opening the project (useful for manual relocation of projects), and information on the total amount of image data that needs to be read.
  • Global Progress - when opening a Vinci project, we now show the load progress of the current image file and the total progress. For loading of older Vinci projects, the lower progress bar is not used separately.

• Fusion Plugin - in the image buffer menu of each fusion layer the current fusion image is now checked, thanks Johnny.
• OrthoView/OrthoDisplays - now asks for confirmation before either resetting or clearing image buffers (right-click menu).
• ROIs/Annotation: Handles - the handles for modifying sizes, bounding rects and shapes of ROIs and Annotations have been re-designed and are now displayed without aliasing artefacts.

• Conversion of a Multi-Frame HRRT series to ECAT7 - use File:Automate:Multi-Frame Conversion to open a dialog for specifiying which files you want to convert. Press "Browse" and pick any file of an HRRT multi-frame series you want to convert. We look for several name patterns and will try to replace the frame number of that file with a placeholder ("<frame>"). If you use "*" in the frame range, Vinci will try to convert all HRRT files that match the pattern you have specified into one ECAT7 multi-frame file.

• LoadView
  • LookForFile - when loading a Vinci project which refers to image data that has been deleted or relocated, you can now browse to an alternative path (using VPickFile), ignore a particular image file (which will be noted in the log) or cancel loading a project: all further processing of the project file will be aborted.
  • The Browse [only] button is back: if checked, Vinci will not load an image you have selected during file browsing immediately. This is a useful feature for multi-frame files: you might want to check the number of frames before loading them in range or sum mode.
• MMM plugin - "use result for next registration" is the default setting for H2O.
• OrthoView/PlanesView: Print Menu - a "Print..." entry has been added to the File menu for context sensitive printing of OrthoViews and PlanesViews. You can also use the printer (icon) shortcut from the toolbars.

• ROIs Statistics - computation of ROI statistics was slightly inconsistent, we now use a more accurate method for modelling the geometric shape of a ROI. Beware: The fixes decribed below will lead to slightly different ROI statistics compared to previous version of Vinci.
  • Rotated ROIs - statistics were calculated on a slighty too small and jagged area. FIXED.
  • Half circle rotated ROIs differed in the number of pixels used in the computation and so naturally in the results. E.g. an unrotated rectangle was calculated with more pixels than the same rectangle with rotation angle 180°. This effect is FIXED for rectangles and rectangular polygons and almost eliminated (e.g. up to 8 pixels of 9500) for ellipses.
• ROI Define Tool
  • for Zoomed OrthoViews, some ROI parameters (width, height, oblique and also surface and volume) were scaled with the zoom factor. - Sorry. FIXED.
  • Changing the ROI rotation angle with the angle button did not immediately update the ROI statistics. FIXED.
• MMM
  • Preprocessing settings were not correctly copied and saved under certain circumstances. FIXED.
  • Manually entered initial transformations as well as transformations from the Magic Tool were ignored. FIXED.
  • The check box "use result for next registration" is functional again.
  • In multiple-registration mode, only the first pair of images was shown in fusion. FIXED.
• ROI Report - TAC - ROIs did change their positions in the ROI-list during TAC computation. FIXED.
• Setting an OrthoDisplay to <empty> crashed Vinci if the image was previously undefined. FIXED.
• ECAT7 Load Plugin
  • certain postprocessing options caused some image files to show a "midget effect" resulting from inconsistencies between the pixel_size_z value from the image header and the plane_separation entry from the image's main header. Vinci now always uses pixel_size_z from the image header. Thanks, Dr. Eschner. FIXED.
  • when summing multiple frames of an ECAT7 file, Vinci might have crashed on writing a summary containing minimum and maximum of the summed image volume (a small typo with ugly results) - sorry. FIXED.
• Annotations - did not reliably save attributes (width and font size) in a Vinci Project File. FIXED.
• MicroPet Load Plugin - reported a "failure" when trying to load older Vinci projects that defined the first frame of a MicroPET image file as "0" instead of "1". FIXED.
• Reslicing with open Zoomed OrthoView - the Zoomed OrthoView was not synchronized correctly when a reslicing operation was performed on the same image buffer in another OrthoView. This bug was introduced in Vinci 1.42.2. FIXED.
• Save Project/Save Project As - did save the "sticky" mouse mode as described in Vinci 1.40.2, however, when restoring the project, the mouse mode was ignored. FIXED.

Vinci 1.40.2, February 27 2004

• PlanesView
  • PlanesView Image Slots can now be used to display slices from up to eight images simultaneously (one image per slot). The slots are named "a", "b", ... , "h".
  • PlanesView General Properties - this dialog defines all properties that belong to PlanesView as a whole or to all image slots at once;
  • PlanesView Image Slots Properties - this dialog defines the properties of an individual image slot and the color settings of its image.
  • New Startup Interpolation Mode - PlanesView will be started in trilinear interpolation mode now; on startup the view will be resized to fit onto the screen. But - (finally, Christof) - if started via the PlanesView button in the Infoline of a particular OrthoDisplay, PlanesView use the 3D-sampling mode of that OrthoDisplay.
  • Reference Image - (except when in TruePixel mode) the reference image - i.e. the image that determines the number and distance of planes for all image slots - can be determined manually or automatically as the image that has maximum dimension or minimum pixelsize in the direction vertical to the plane shown on the chosen OrthoPart. Possible rotation(s) are taken into account. Thanks, Johnny.
  • Centered Planes - the displayed planes will now always remain centered, i.e. the center of the reference image will stay in the center plane - image move(s) or zooming is taken into account.
  • Display and Pixel Sizes, Number of Planes and Distance of Slices - can now be chosen arbitrarily (except when in TruePixel mode).
  • Quick Overview - Inverse Zooming - in the General Properties dialog you can easily shrink the size of all displays by a spin button to quickly get an overview over many slices (except when in TruePixel mode). Vinci will automatically reslice all relevant planes with an appropriately changed (larger) sampling pixel size.
  • New Accelerators - the arrow left and right keys shift the starting plane by one display, the up and down keys by one row of displays back and forth; the page up and down keys increment and decrement the number of planes to skip in the view (nice idea, Moritz).
  • Started from the Menu PlanesView will now show the first image of the current OrthoView or show the first image.
• PlanesView Image Slots
  • Images chosen with the select image button are being shown automatically.
  • The starting plane can be scrolled individually or for all shown images at once.
  • In cut mouse mode the cut will be propagated to all OrthoDisplays that happen to show that image.
  • Linked images - images linked on any OrthoView will be cut synchronously in cut mouse mode.
  • Slot identification - if more than one image slot is activated (multislot mode) the PlanesView title line displays the image name under the mouse preceded by the name of the slot. The PlanesView info line displays coordinates and values of the image under the mouse preceded as well by the name of the slot. In single slot mode no slot names are displayed, as before.
  • Print dialog - keywords refer to the first shown image slot, so far.
  • Select image button in the PlanesView info line does start the PlanesView General Properties dialog in multislot mode. In single slot mode it displays a list of all images of the current project, as before.

• MMM Tool
  • Spatial normalization - first preview of a new method for automatic non-linear warping of images to a template. Tested for normalization of FMZ-PET images to the Vinci's FMZ template. Please note: the FMZ template is currently only available at MPIFNF. Three setups have been predefined:
    • 'PET intersubject (robust)' - affine normalization, robust but not very precise
    • 'PET intersubject (precise)' - non-linear normalization, precise but less robust
    • 'PET intersubject (compromise)' - a compromise between precision and robustness
    In addition, it is possible to fine-tune the extent of deformations for the latter two setups: click the button 'nonlinear >>' on the 'Schema' tab. Note that the online display of registration progress is disabled for non-linear normalizations.
  • Registration setups - registration setups tuned for specific tasks (registration of the FDG,FMZ,MET,DOPA and H2O-PET images) have been created.
  • Output types - basically two types of registration result can be produced: (1) resulting transformation is directly applied to a source image (as with the Magic Tool) or (2) a new buffer with a resliced image is created. For spatial normalization only the latter type is currently available.
  • White-Matter Normalization - a new plugin for intensity normalization of images using a 2D white-matter ROI.
  • Z-Scores Analysis - a new plugin for a statistical comparison of FMZ-PET images with a control group. Please note: the FMZ template is required for this option and is currently only available at MPIFNF, if the FMZ template is not present, the plugin will be deactivated. The tool creates an image of z-scores displayed using the 'Ratio' colortable and with the z-scores range centered around zero. Optional intensity normalization, filtering (gauss or median) and correction for patient's age can (should) be used. The tested image must be spatially normalized to Vinci's FMZ-PET template beforehand (e.g. with MMM Co-Registration or SPM). Advanced options are accessible through the 'Advanced' button and include global mean scaling and an option to select own template images.

• Validation
  • Vinci Binary Files - MD5 validation has been extended to checks of binary files (.exe, .dll) that are specific to one distribution of Vinci, thus allowing detection of manipulation, e.g. by a particular kind of virus.
  • Image data - Please note that we try to use unprocessed image data for validation with MD5 signatures, so this is a platform indendent technique that should yield the same results using "openssl dgst -md5" on current distributions of Linux. Computation of MD5 checksums takes about 0.1 s on an HRRT ACS class machine (3 GHz) for a 52 MB HRRT image, but, naturally, is more time consuming on smaller systems, e.g. it takes 1.2 s on a PIII @ 500 MHz. Some benchmarking information is given in the log.

• Vinci Pack & Go - a new feature available when saving a Vinci project file. Inside an institute, image data will typically be stored on one or more centrally accessible network shares. This avoids duplicating potentially large amounts of image data and facilitates sharing and exchanging results (e.g. by using Vinci project files on network shares). However, when using Vinci on a laptop for presenting patient studies in other departments (or when trying to ship data to other sites, e.g. by CD-ROM or USB-Stick) it is useful to have all necessary data in one directory with the project file (Vinci uses relative file names). The new Pack & Go option's "Preflight Check" will tell you how much image data needs to be copied. After copying (not moving) the files, Vinci will adapt the image paths of the current project.

• Save Image - will now ask if an existing file should be modified or overwritten.
• If you link an image in TruePixel mode cut synchronization only will be set off. Thanks Christof.
• Most Recent File List - Project files will now be added to the "Recent File List" at the end of Vinci's "File" menu when (a) a project is loaded and (b) a project is saved under a different name. New projects will not be added to the list until they are saved to a file.
• Contour Plugin - "Apply" is now the new default button.
• Contour/Fusion shortcuts - Tip: to quickly open the Contour Plugin or Fusion plugin for a particular OrthoDisplay, use <K> (Contours) or <F> (Fusion) when the appropriate OrthoDisplay has the keyboard focus. This functionality has been extended and now also works if the mouse cursor is on the corresponding color bar.
• LogView - small cosmetic changes. Vinci now insists on "Courier New" as standard non-proportional font for general output (MMM output is much better to read that way). However, you can still select a text size of your choice (e.g. by using the keyboard shortcuts <Ctrl>-Y and <Ctrl>-<Shift>-Y).
• Save Image - more properties of HRRT images will be used for writing ECAT7 images: we now also convert a patient's date of birth, the radio isotope and its halflife.
• "Empty" image buffers - each OrthoDisplay can hold one (or, in case of Fusion or Contour mode, several) Vinci Images for display and analysis. We also have been using "placeholder images" in new OrthoViews: if image data is assigned to that image buffer (by using the LoadView), it will be automatically displayed instead of the "placeholder image". Vinci now also supports "empty" OrthoDisplays (available from the "Select Image" button, left in the InfoLine, or by the menu in each OrthoDisplay's title menu).
• OrthoDisplay: mouse modes - when moving from transaxial to coronal, or from coronal to sagittal parts of an OrthoView while the mouse button is pressed, Vinci will no longer re-set the mouse-mode to "Arrow", i.e. you can cut or move continuously.
• OrthoDisplay: Paste at Mouse Pos - this new option allows to paste one or more objects (typically 2D ROIs) at the current mouse position by using the keyboard shortcut <Ctrl>-V. See also "Paste in Place" below.
• OrthoDisplay: Paste in Place - this new option allows to paste one or more objects (typically 2D ROIs) at the position corresponding to the originating OrthoDisplay by using the keyboard shortcut <Alt>-B. See also "Paste at Mouse Pos" above.
• ECAT7: image info - now also displays information about frames, and frame duration.
• OrthoTumor plugin - work in progress, MPIFNF only, please ignore.

• TAC for HRRT multi frame images
  • The frame numbers extracted from the file names of were not always correct. FIXED.
  • The frame numbers written into the output files had an offset of one relative to the actual numbers of the frames specified in the tool and used in the computation. FIXED.
• Save Image - after saving an image buffer in ECAT7 format, closing Vinci could cause unexpected behaviour due to a memory deallocation problem - Sorry. FIXED.
• New Project - newly generated projects were all assigned the default name "Project". FIXED. They are now numbered consecutively "Project", "Project [1]", "Project [2]", in the same manner as the other Vinci objects, OrthoView, PlanesView, PlotsView, etc.
• PlanesView
  • Zooming via context menu did not automatically resize the view. FIXED.
  • Cross Marker was not redrawn during scrolling. FIXED.
  • Accelerator "Y" to (de-)activate the cross marker did nothing. FIXED.
  • Moving Cross did not disappear after pressing the "X"-button twice. FIXED.
• IDL interface - the example files to use Vinci from within IDL could not load the demo images in Vinci 1.30.0. FIXED.
• Save Project As - project names that contained more than one "." were not always handled correctly when saving a project. However, Vinci always displayed project names correctly in windows titles. FIXED.
• Save Project/Save Project As - when invoked via keyboard shortcut (which is <Ctrl>-S and <Ctrl>-<Shift>-S, resp.), Vinci switched the mouse mode to either Move or Rotate (as <Ctrl> and <Shift> have special meaning for non-sticky mouse modes) in case an OrthoView had the keyboard focus. This non-sticky mode was also saved in the project file. Non-sticky modes are only active as long as a particular key combination is pressed (e.g. <Ctrl>-<Space> for Zoom mode) whereas Vinci sticky modes are permant after a keyboard shortcut is pressed (e.g. the Cut mode after <C>). The submenu "Mouse Modes" in a right-click menu of an OrthoDisplay lists the available sticky modes. When saving a project, non-sticky modes will now be ignored. FIXED.
• Validation for computed images - images computed in Vinci (e.g. by 3D Gauss filtering or subtraction) did not always save a correct checksum in the project file, thus wrongly maintaining that a particular image had changed when re-loading the project. In all cases where a checksum error is reported (due to the fact that image data has indeed changed or due to the bug described here), Vinci will write consistent checksums next time you write the project file.
• Plugins and <Return> - some plugins suffered from a rather awkward effect due to default behaviour of dialogs for <Return> and <Enter> keys: in cases where we did not provide a "default button" the user could be left with an "empty" toolbox. FIXED.
• New OrthoView - have now always OrthoDisplays of the specified size (default: 256 x 256 pixels, transaxial, coronal and sagittal).
• Zoomed OrthoView:
  • Zooming on a Zoomed OrthoView (e.g. generated by doubleclick on TRANSAXIAL OrthoPart of a normal OrthoDisplay) would only propagate to the TRANSAXIAL OrthoPart of the normal OrthoDisplay. The CORONAL and SAGITTAL OrthoParts would remain unzoomed. FIXED.
  • The cursor form did not directly change after an accelerator key had been pressed. FIXED.
• Windows NT installation - trying to install the previous release of Vinci on Windows NT resulted in an error message (SetFilePointerEx() not found): we used a system function that is only available for newer versions of Windows, sorry. That new part of Vinci has been rewritten, so we can make do with what NT has to offer in this respect. FIXED.
• Contour Tool
  • disabling/removing contours - crashed Vinci in certain (lamentable) circumstances. FIXED.
  • undefined images - it is no longer possible to assign Contours to empty or undefined image buffers, Vinci should now issue a warning message. FIXED.
• Image Volume Arithmetics/Filter - image properties (patient name, study name, image data units, isotope half life, etc.) were not always inherited by computed images (images created by filtering or other operations from existing images), a bug that has partly been with us since Vinci 1.05.0. All important properties of images in HRRT and ECAT7 format should now be propagated correctly. FIXED.
• If you loaded a project with an OrthoView of, say, 5 OrthoDisplays (which will have 5 image buffers) and the project wanted, say, OrthoDisplay C to show image buffer number 10, this image buffer would not yet exist. The system produced some unnecessary error messages. FIXED. Now the wanted image buffer will be generated on the fly.

Vinci 1.40.1, February 24 2004

Internal pre-Release to Vinci 1.40.2

Vinci 1.40.0, February 10 2004

Internal pre-Release to Vinci 1.40.1

Vinci 1.30.0, January 16 2004

• Fast IO routines - this release introduces a number of optimized routines for fast reading of large files (global IO buffers, sequential-hinting, optimized memory alignment, and methods that can bypass the system's cache manager). These new routines have been applied to the following load plugins:
  • Load ECAT7 - has been completely rewritten and works now significantly faster: data is read in larger chunks; we mostly use unbuffered, optimized IO methods and give visual feedback about the load progress. For multi-bed studies we use the old method, which is still available for all types of ECAT7 images.
  • Load HRRT Image - we have also observed some improvement here (the old routines were already quite efficient so the difference is not as striking as with larger ECAT7 files).

• PlanesView
  • zoomed displays - in TriLinear and NextNeighbor interpolation Vinci now can display the image using the current sampling pixel size (zoomed). The minimum display size is 256 pixel - for now.
  • plane difference - the difference of planes in TriLinear and NextNeighbor interpolation is now given by the current sampling pixel size (similar to MPI-Tool behaviour).

• VPickFile - now has a Presets Editor: use the Options button (next to VPickFile's "OK" button) to open it ("Presets" Tab). You can use the Presets editor to create, edit and delete shortcuts to directories you use frequently. These shortcuts can be accessed through the Presets-menu of the directory history (arrow button next to "Dir", top left). You can also use the Presets Editor to import and export VPickFile settings (file history, directory history, shortcuts) and transfer them to another computer using a file in XML-format. VPickFile also supports institute-wide settings: administrators can set up default presets for all users.

• Report Tool TAC - Multi Selection listbox - you can now generate TAC plots and file output for all selected ROIs at once. If no ROI is selected, the TACs for all ROIs will be computed.
• TruePixel Mode - an icon showing the axes of Vinci's internal coordinate system for image buffers is displayed in the OrthoDisplay info line.
• Validation of Image Data - we now save an MD5 checksum ("fingerprint") for selected image data in the project file: HRRT image (raw file and raw header), ECAT7 image (Mainheader, Subheader, raw image volume). When such a project is loaded, we validate all image data for which we have checksums. Thus we can detect if image data has changed. The contents of the project files is also validated (introduced in Vinci 1.08).
• InfoView
  • About Configuration - a new HTML entry that summarizes all plugins and libraries (versions, paths) currently used. These new tables replace the previous listings which used to be collected in the log at startup. You can conveniently navigate to the new page via "Help":"About Configuration".
  • Auto Resize - when re-sizing the InfoView, Vinci will now try to set the buffer list in the bottom section to a useful size and maximize the top-right HTML view.
  • ECAT7 image header - now also displays frame start and frame duration for multi-frame studies.
• Save Project - now performs several checks to make sure that the project file has been written correctly; numerous new tests (e.g. for write protection of previous project or backup project file) and diagnostic messages have been added.
• Load/Save History - duplicate file entries will now be deleted automatically. However, the chronological order of entries is still maintained (the last file loaded/saved is the first entry of the file history).
• Save Images - now uses a more flexible way of displaying the save history (similar to load history), especially for long path names.
• LogView - now also uses style attributes (bold, red/green color) to emphasize error messages and message captions.
• LoadView - improved handling of drag and drop: dropping files that cannot be read by any of the load plugins will now result in only one error message.
• Save Images - now also uses the VPickFile browser.

• Save ECAT7 Image - in certain circumstances, image subheaders did not contain correct dimensions (of the destination image). FIXED. Sorry, Johnny.
• Save ECAT7 image - did not reliably create multi-frame files with correct frame information (start time, duration) from HRRT images. FIXED.
• Project Files (*.vpx) - caused problems if they were passed as command line arguments with relative path names. FIXED.
• VPickFile
  • - in some cases responded with "invalid path" when choosing a perfectly valid path for saving a file. FIXED.
  • Relative Paths - specifying relative paths like "\winnt" by keyboard input did not work propely (with the exception of "\"). FIXED.
• Report Tool TAC
  • Image parameters were not initialized if the image was loaded into an OrthoDisplay with an already open Report Tool in TAC mode. FIXED.
  • OpenOffice template files were installed in the wrong directory and were not de-installed. FIXED.
• PlanesView Properties (advanced) - cutting on the PlanesView did not change the cut position in the PlanesView Properties. FIXED.

Vinci 1.22.0, December 19 2003

• Display Properties - including TruePixel zoom level, 3D and 2D-zoom method - will now be saved in the Vinci project files.
• Load HRRT image - now reads new "image data units" tag.
• Save ECAT7 image - improved consistency in main header.

• TruePixel Mode fixes
  • multiple cuts on the same OrthoPart would change the cutting plane in rare cases. FIXED.
  • cuts on zoomed display would not work correctly if the image was previously zoomed in non-TruePixel mode. FIXED.
• Report Tool - ROI and TAC - writing native MS Excel and OpenOffice spreadsheets would in some cases result in invalid files. FIXED.

Vinci 1.21.0, December 16 2003

• Report Tool - time activity curves (TACs) will now be computed in the TAC tag of the report tool. New features:
  • MicroPET multiframe images - you can compute TACs based on ECAT7, HRRT and now also on MicroPET multiframe images.
  • MS Excel and OO SpreadSheet support - template based output of TAC report files in native MicroSoft Excel and OpenOffice (spreadsheet with attributes, XML-based) formats.
  • Selection of ROIs - a listbox shows all ROIs defined on the image of the display the tool is currently working on. In the listbox you select the ROI base for the TAC. During the computation the selected ROI will stay unchanged and other ROIs on the image will no longer get deleted.
  • Selection of image - pressing the button with the characteristic image buffer icon presents a popup menu where you can choose any already loaded image of the current project.
  • Drag & Drop - you can directly drag the current image from any OrthoDisplay to the tool just by pressing the OrthoView name button .
• VPickFile
  • Options Dialog - next to the "Cancel"-button. Several options can also be set using a context-sensitive right-click menu.
  • Patterns Filter - similar to the standard file browser, you can specify a name pattern for filtering certain file names in directories with many files. We support the placeholders "*" (arbitrary amount of arbitrary characters) and "?" (one arbitrary character). Pattern matching is case-insensitive. Example: "*cat*" will look for all filename that contain the substring "cat" and will match "FDGcat2003Dec10" or "Study_CAT_fdg". The current filter will be displayed in the status line. Use the "Show All File" option to remove the filter - enjoy, Ayla.
  • Multi Selection: sequence - by default, Vinci will return the files you have selected (if multi selection is enabled, e.g. for loading of image data) in strict alphabetical order. You can now also have them returned in the order of how you selected them ("Keep selection order" in the Options Dialog) - thanks, Johnny.
  • Keyboard Shortcuts - several shortcuts have been added. If you move the mouse over a button and keep it there for a short time, a "Tooltip" will tell you more.
  • Number formatting - large numbers will have the usual "," separator.

• VPickFile
  • Standard File Browser - holding the <SHIFT> key when opening VPickFile or specifying "Standard File browser" in the Options manager will now work correctly as advertised in "Standard Browser optional" of version 1.20.0. The corresponding button is no longer disabled in the Options dialog.
  • Absolute Path Names were not treated correctly (marked as invalid input). You can now input paths like "C:\MyFirstDirectory\AnotherDir" and Vinci will open that directory (or file). FIXED.
• Report Tool - undefined image data units lead to illegal MS Excel and OpenOffice XML-tables in some cases. FIXED.
• The Profiles Tool did generate new profiles since Vinci 1.10.0 when changing the OrthoDisplay with spin button or combobox in the upper left corner of each tool. FIXED.

• Report Tool: TAC - writing native OpenOffice files (*.sxc) for ROI-Reports works, xml-based Excel (*.xls) format works for both ROIs and TACs. However, we currently seem to have a problem with generating OpenOffice files for TAC reports. Sorry.

Vinci 1.20.1, December 03 2003

• VPickFile features a new button to show the workspace of your computer. You can use this to get an overview of all available drives (this usually includes mounted network directories) and select one. The workspace is also be accessed by double-clicking ".." in the root-directory of any drive.
• Load HRRT sinogram - GUI settings (format, span, crystal rings, segment) can now be scripted and will be stored in a VinciProject file. If a header file is present and format is set to "auto", all parameters except "segment index" will be read from the header.

• VPickFile had a problem changing from the root directory into the first directory level and back again when double-clicking "..". FIXED.
• Color Palette Small Steps - choice of colors for values below the bottom and top threshold (window) was awkward and has been changed to black and white, resp. FIXED.
• Open via Explorer - if a file with a file type that has been assigned to Vinci (s. File Association of Vinci 1.20.0) is double-clicked in the Explorer and another instance of Vinci is already open, Vinci will ask if a new instance should be used or if the file should be loaded with the previous instance. When answering "previous" Vinci activated the previous instance but did not load the file. FIXED.

• VPickFile: Standard File Browser - as we have mentioned in "Standard Browser optional" of version 1.20.0, we intend to offer the Windows standard for file browsing as an alternative to our new VPickFile tool. However, for loading of images we need to improve handling of plugin types for some image types in our compatibility class. Until then, changing to the previous file browser is disabled - sorry.

Vinci 1.20.0, December 02 2003

• VPickFile - we have developed a utility for selecting one or more files from a local disk or a network share, e.g. images files or Vinci projects. We also felt that the Windows file browser (although the XP version has many improvements) still lacks several useful features. Nice job, Roland!
  • File/Dir history - next to the file and directory fields you find drop down menus listing the last files and directories you have visited. Vinci keeps separate histories for loading/saving of files and projects.
  • Auto-completion of file and directory names.
  • Date Formats - you can select between a plethora of date formats (American, European, Unix, "today").
  • Size Formats - file size can be displayed in several units.
  • Dialog Size, Position and Column settings - Vinci remembers your last settings for the widget and its columns.
  • Standard Browser optional - if you press the <SHIFT>-key when pressing the "browse" button or selecting the "Open Project" menu, Vinci will use the standard MS Windows file browser. You can also set Vinci to always use the Windows file browser (Extras:Options, Project settings, default: off).
  • Keyboard shortcuts - press the <ALT>-key to display available shortcuts (underlined characters).
  • Show All option - some file formats have no standard file extension (e.g. flat images). With this new feature it is now possible to select an arbitray file for a specific load plugin.
  • Directory shortcuts - you can define named shortcuts to favorite directories in an XML-formatted configuration file. VPickfile will list them in a special "Presets" sub-menu in the directory history menu. Please see "DirShortcuts_111+.xml" in Vinci's template directory for details.
  • Multi-selection for images - you can select several images by pressing the <CTRL> or the <SHIFT> key (Windows standard).
  • Multi-selection: sorting - a multi-selection of images will be processed in strict alphabetical order of filenames.

• The new Report Tool generates ROI report files in native MS Excel and OpenOffice (spreadsheet with attributes, XML-based) formats, also as plain text. The new Report Tool will provide all Vinci reporting functionality in the future.
  
• OpenOffice support
  • Report Tool - ROI report files in OpenOffice native SXC-format.
  • Copy to Clipboard - directly OpenOffice importable enhanced metafile format.
  For writing native OpenOffice files we make use of the zlib DLL package by Gilles Vollant. Zlib.Dll is an extension to the widely used zlib by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler.

• ECAT7 header editor - before saving a file in ECAT7 format you can now edit several header properties (patient name, patient id, date of birth), e.g. to create anonymous data sets - thanks, Carmen.

• New "Small Steps" palette - a new color palette has been added: alternating colors with high contrast, suitable do detect small differences in image volumes.

• File Associations - the file associations editor (Extras:File Associations) has been improved. It can now reliably tell you which files will be opened (double click in the Explorer) by this version of Vinci. When de-selecting a file type, Vinci restores the previous settings from its backup key.
• Explorer icons - all files that have been registered to Vinci have now an icon that will be displayed in the Windows Explorer.
• Auto registration - when installing Vinci, all suitable file type will be registered for opening by double-click unless another program has already claimed them. So we try to be polite when installing. If you want to make sure that Vinci opens a particular file type, use Vinci's File Associations editor to overwrite other registry settings (Vinci keeps a backup of previous settings).

• Image Volume Arithmetics and Image Volume Filter - if at least one image involved in the computation is displayed in TruePixel mode the resulting image will now also be displayed in TruePixel mode. Thanks Christof.
• PlanesView - new default ordering of transaxial slices: Transaxial slices are now ordered from the bottom up to the top of brain. Checking the new "Top-Down" button in the PlanesView-Properties will show the old planes ordering. The type of ordering is saved in the Vinci project file.
• Detailed Version History - this document ("History.html") was approx. 60 printed pages in size so it was time to split it. The older part (before January 2003) is accessible through a link at the end of this file.

• Load MINC plugin - reslicing and color properties of MINC images were saved correctly in the project file but ignored when re-loading a Vinci Project. Sorry, Johnny. FIXED.
• Load ECAT7 plugin - "sum" for frames and "all" for bed positions should now work as advertised. FIXED.
• TruePixel Mode - two linked images (one of them also shown on a zoomed OrthoView) did not move, zoom, cut or set the rotation center in sync if they had different pixelsizes. FIXED.
• Double Click Project Load - there were problems to load a project by double click since Vinci 1.09. FIXED.
• An OrthoDisplay showing an image that was also used in a fusion display of another OrthoDisplay was changed to fusion mode after the first reslicing operation. FIXED.
• Vinci crashed when trying to create new color palettes with the palette editor - sorry. FIXED.
• Windows NT hotfix of Nov 4 2003 (when trying to start Vinci 1.10 after installation a message "GetFileSizeEx not found in Kernel32.dll" is diplayed on systems running Windows NT4) has been included.

Vinci 1.10.0, October 31 2003

• New Compiler - the principal tool for development of Vinci has been changed from Visual Studio 6 to Visual C++.Net 2003. Transition was quite smooth and we have already incorporated a number of improvements that have justified the change: we have taken the opportunity to clean up parts of our source code basis and have increased the level of ANSI conformance (as has MS), we have experienced significant performance benefits for the PIV platform (more is to follow) and have found several bugs (s.b.) due to better debug support in the new compiler.

• LoadView - if an error occurs while loading an image file we now display a message box and bring the LogView to the front.
• LoadView: History - the Load history in the LoadView now only contains absolute file names (Vinci projects still use file names relative to the project file). Thus re-loading a file outside the context of its original Vinci project should always work.
• MicroPet Load Plugin - a change back from frame mode "All" to frame mode "Single" now resets the frames list. Thanks Carmen.

• MMM Tool
  • Registration setups - all configurable settings for a registration job (registration schema, preprocessing, type of initial transformation estimate) have been brought together in a named "registration setup". Several setups for the most common tasks have been predefined: PET -> MR, H2O-PET -> MR, MR -> CT, etc. New user-defined setups can be created by duplication of an already defined setup (using the button ">>" next to the list of setups). If you make changes to the setups and later want to get back to the default settings, press the button ">>" and select "reset".
  • One plugin for both single and multiple registration  - use the button "multi" to switch to the multiple-registration mode.
  • Smart preprocessing of images - histogram-based thresholding combined with a sequence of morphological operations perform an automatic segmentation into voxels of interest and background. This preprocessing results in improved speed and robustness of registration. Preprocessing can be defined independently for reference and reslice images using buttons ">>" next to the image display selection. There are four steps in a preprocessing, each of them can be disabled: (1) 3D-Gaussian filtering (pre-filtering), followed by (2) intensity thresholding, (3) morphological operations and (4) 3D-Gaussian filtering of the thresholded result (post-filtering). Preprocessing can be disabled for both image at once by unchecking the check box "use preprocessing".
  • Initial Transformation Estimate - the dialog window now contains a button "Preview" that applies currently selected transformation parameters to the reslice image display.
  • Job queue control - a new way of handling registration processes. Pressing the "Job Queue Control" button shows a list box that gathers all running, pending and finished jobs. Registration jobs can be started in two ways: (1) pressing the button "Register" takes your settings (reference and reslice image, reg. schema, etc.), adds them as a new job to the queue and starts it; (2) pressing the button "Add To Queue" does the same but does not start registration. Using the second method, you can define several registrations in advance and run them all by pressing the "Run Jobs" button. In the queue window you can reorder registration jobs, delete jobs or save resulting transformation parameters for individual jobs - right-click on a job and choose an action from menu.
  • Storing of results - if you close MMM window, all defined registration jobs and their results are stored in a temporary file and reloaded when you open the MMM window again. Jobs and results are not saved on closing of the whole Vinci application.
  • .mar files - Vinci now supports loading/saving of transformation parameters in mar-format (developed by Leibinger and the Department of Stereotactic Neurosurgery, Cologne). If you work with images in Leibinger format, the z-position parameter is extracted and used in the conversion from/to a .mar transformation file.
  • Masks - binary or weighting masks can be used to remove unwanted portions of image volumes from registration. Masks are crucial for a successful registration of animal studies. Define a VOI that encloses a volume that you want to include in a registration and select the VOI in the tab "Masks" in the MMM window. You can also choose an image as a mask. In this case, it acts as a weighting mask for the corresponding reference or reslice image.
  • New similarity measures - normalized mutual information and entropy correlation coefficient have been implemented. Both are supposed to perform better than the basic mutual information when image volumes only partially overlap (e.g. when using preprocessing or masks).
  • Number of histogram bins for computation of mutual information is now adjustable. A fixed predefined number of bins in the previous versions of MMM sometimes caused problems with small and noisy image volumes (the average count rate in the joint histogram was too low). Therefore, this version allows to select either a suitable count rate or a fixed number of bins (tab "Reg. Schema" -> "Reg. Schema Settings" -> tab "Sim. Measure").

• Load ECAT7 plugin - the new compiler surprised us by finding a rather nasty bug in our ECAT7 plugin that might have caused several unexplained crashes in the last months. FIXED.
• ROI Define Tool - ROIs could be created on displays that did not contain an image. FIXED.
• Contours tool: Image Buffer changes - when changing the image buffer associated with an opened Contours plugin (deleting, overwriting, exchanging with another image buffer), the plugin GUI did not reflect the changes of the image buffer correctly. FIXED.
• Contours tool: Histogram - the extreme values in the histogram were calculated correctly but not displayed properly. FIXED.

Vinci 1.09.0, October 20 2003

• ROI Report Tool
  • Statistics on all ROIs of an OrthoDisplay, an OrthoView or the whole project can be written into a TXT-textfile or output in Excel XML-Format (requires MS Excel 2000). The report will be shown directly with the programs registered to open these file-types, i.e. the text editor of your choice and Excel, resp.
  • Template driven reporting - this reporting tool is template-driven: we invite interested readers to take a look at the bottom part of ROI_Excel_A.xml in the template directory of the current distribution. It is obvious that - similar to how we handle the InfoView HTML templates - changing formatting of numbers or layout, leaving out columns, etc. is very easy to configure. Please let us know what other templates we should supply in the next releases.
  • Internationalization of number formats - one very strong point for xml-based Excel files (OpenOffice will work similarly) is that we can assign a number attribute to each numerical value and thus make sure that numbers are displayed and interpreted correctly independent of the operating system's preference for number formats ("." vs "," in standard English and German use).
  • The current project state can be auto-saved in a Vinci project-file that has the same filename (extension VPX) as the ROI-report if desired. The MD5-check sum saved in the project-file is also part of the report. So you can verify that a given project if loaded would re-create the ROI setup necessary to re-produce the reported results.

• Project Description - when saving a Vinci Project you can now (optionally) provide some textual information on the project, e.g. patient names, diagnostic keywords. We will use that information in later versions for browsing through summaries of project files and a network based, database driven project browser (list of "hot" projects for collaboration in networks).

• TruePixel mode - fixes and more
  • Linked Images - cut, move, set rotation center and zoom have not always been working correctly with two linked images since Vinci 1.08.0. FIXED.
  • ROI extent - width and height of a ROI were incorrect if the image was not shown in display size. FIXED.
• Vinci Project Backup - when saving a project file, Vinci reported in some cases that an existing project file could not be overwritten (and suggested using a different file name) when infact this was not true. FIXED.
• Double Click on Project file did sometimes open project files with long file names as 8.3-filenames. FIXED.
• OrthoView Plugins - on German keyboards several characters that require <AltGr> were suppressed. FIXED.
• Image Volume Arithmetics - for addition and substraction, the factor b of the second image volume was re-set to 1 if it was 0 initially. FIXED.

Vinci 1.08.0, October 10 2003

• Relative Paths in Projects - when saving a Vinci Project, all file paths referred to in the project (mostly image files) will be saved relative to the project file: if the project file and associated images reside on one disk system, you can just copy all files (keeping the relative directory structure intact) to another file system (e.g. a CD or DVD) and Vinci will load the project correctly. Within one Vinci session, all file paths are displayed as absolute paths (as before).
• Vinci Project validation (MD5) - each Vinci Project is now signed with a MD5 checksum and validated when loaded: any changes to the file will be detected and reported. Vinci's MD5 engine is based on L.P. Deutsch's independent and free implementation of the MD5 (RFC 1321) algorithm. Not available for Vinci Lite.
• Vinci Project Backup - when saving a project file, Vinci will now rename any previous project file to <project>.backup.vpx before writing the new project file.
• Temporary Licenses - starting with this release, we can offer temporary licenses for trying out Vinci: all features (e.g. writing of Vinci Project files, output of resampled and co-registered image volumes, 100 OrthoDisplays per OrthoView) will be available until the license expires. Upgrade to a full and permant license will only require exchanging the license file.
• Image File Name in Metafile - you can now output the image file name (with and without path) and image buffer number above the OrthoDisplay/Color Legend part.
  The background color of the text is the global background color of the color legend or the normal background color of the OrthoDisplay title line if the Background Color option is checked. The text color is white on a dark background and black on a light one. Thanks, Christof.
  Local background setting of the Color Legend will now be enabled only if global background setting is disabled as global settings overwrite the local settings anyway.
• Drag & Drop Support for Files - has been improved.
  • Project files (*.vpx) - can be dropped anywhere on Vinci (yes, Christof, including the LogView widget) and Vinci tries to open them.
  • Image files - Vinci will try to load one (or more) images that have been dropped onto it by using the default settings for that image type. If you drop image files onto a particular OrthoDisplay (say: "C") of an OrthoView, Vinci will try to load the image data and then show the image in the OrthoDisplay where you dropped the file(s).
  • Text files - files suitable for showing them in a textual representation (*.txt, *.log) will be displayed in the LogView.
• Reset image buffer now only changes the reslicing settings of the image on the display where you opened the context menu i.e. other images of a link channel are no longer affected. To reset all linked images you can use the context menu item Re-Set to Saved Link State under Saved Reslicing Settings when you entered the link state in reset position or saved the link state appropriately.
• Contours Tool - now uses an optimized rendering routine for standard contours (one level, zero width), s.a. Bug Fixes.
• Index Volume - if you load a Vinci Project that creates an Index Volume based on a .3dt file which is inaccessible or incomplete, Vinci now asks whether you want Vinci to generate index entries on the fly, skip the index volume or handle it as a simple image file. Previous versions handled this case rather more ungracefully (s. Bug Fixes).
• Save Modified Check - this recently introduced feature has been improved: it now recognizes more cases where saving of a Vinci project is not necessary (because no significant changes to a previously saved versions have occured). If <Shift> or <Control> is pressed when closing Vinci, no check will be performed. In the Extras:Options settings you can disable this check altogether.
• New Rainbow color table - another "rainbow" type color table has been added which is available through the "Favorite" color table menu.

• TruePixel mode - fixes and more
  • Cut - due to a hideous rounding problem with negative numbers cutting a HRRT sinogram on the coronal or sagittal OrthoPart in plane 206 showed the (empty) plane 207 on the transaxial OrthoPart. FIXED.
  • Cut a zoomed image did not always hit the correct zoomed big pixels. FIXED. Cut in zoomed TruePixel mode - as Move and Zoom before - is now quantized to the origin (lower left corner in coronal and sagittal and upper left corner in transaxial OrthoPart) of the zoomed big pixels.
  • Double click Zoom always opened a Zoomed OrthoView with TruePixel mode standard parameters. FIXED.
  • Horizontal Profiles showed non-integer x-coordinates if computed on an un-zoomed image. FIXED.
  • Linked Images - if you had two linked images in an OrthoView and one of them in a separate Zoomed OrthoView, zoom operations on the image that was not shown on the zoomed OrthoView did not affect this zoomed OrthoView. The respective Undo operation did not yield the expected results either. FIXED.
• Contours Tool - in certain circumstances produced a "halo" effect, occasionally appearing as a "frame" around the Display - sorry, Norbert. FIXED.
• IDL_myfunction.pro - this program written in the IDL language and located in the bin-directory (sample code to demonstrate remote control of Vinci from high-level languages) was not adapted automatically with our PostInstall tool after installation of the Vinci 1.07.0 distribution - and thus needed a (little) modification before running: it should now run immediately, automatically using the current Vinci version. FIXED.
• Linked Images - if you had two linked images in an OrthoView and one of them in a separate Zoomed OrthoView, the move, zoom, cut and rotation operations were not always propagated correctly to all images of that link channel. FIXED.
• Profiles - horizontal and vertical profiles were computed at 256 positions (for normal OrthoDisplay size) but displayed for the first 255 only. FIXED.
• OrthoDisplay in Metafile - global and local background color chosen via the "other" button did not set the background but the text color and did not reflect the color change in the user interface. FIXED.
• Index Volume - Vinci crashed if you loaded a project with an index volume based on a .3dt file and this file could not be found or was defect. FIXED.
• Load Image - Vinci crashed in certain circumstances when trying to load an older project file with images that no longer existed. FIXED.
• Load Image - Vinci crashed when trying to open some - almost - correct directory paths. FIXED.
• OrthoDisplay - Vinci crashed once while clearing an image buffer and afterwards leaving the OrthoView. Hopefully FIXED.
• ScriptDemo - showed a messagebox (frame not found) in TAC tool. FIXED.

Vinci 1.07.0, September 24 2003

• Load Image (Presets) - the user interfaced has been redesigned and, we hope, improved. Presets can be called up and edited using the "triangle-button" next to the "File(s)" button in LoadView.
• Load Flat Image - now allows pixel sizes of up to 15 mm.

• Index Volume improvements (VOI define plugin):
  • Find - this new feature allows to display a particular VOI by cutting the image at the center of the VOI. It then marks the VOI with a short "blinking effect".
  • VOI selection in list now also marks the selected VOI (short blinking effect).
  • Large VOIs - index volumes with large VOIs need a very long time to show the indeces in the corresponding listbox, especially for the default VOI of a newly opened tool. Now, if the number of indeces is larger than 1000 the listbox will no longer be shown by default. It can however be displayed by the new edit list button.
  • Remove Overlap now implemented for regular VOIs.
  • VOI default position - a newly generated VOI was not always visible as it was generated at the image center. It will be created at the current cut position now.
  • A New Index Volume was not shown on the OrthoView after creation as it got an yet unused image buffer number. It will be created as the next free image buffer now.

• MINC images - the load and save plugins for MINC images have been extended significantly to also allow loading and saving of image attributes. The InfoView now displays the main image attributes of MINC files. However, depending on how the MINC image was generated (i.e. converted from some other image format, not necessarily with Vinci) many attributes of an image file might be undefined.

• ScriptDemo - communication between the ScriptDemo application and its private instance of Vinci failed. FIXED.
• Index Volume - fixes and more:
  • Loading an ECAT 7 image after an 3DT file did not work correctly. FIXED.
  • New VOI - Vinci crashed if you pressed the new VOI button and did not create an appropriate new index volume before. FIXED.
  • New Index Volume - Vinci crashed if you tried to create a new index volume to an empty image buffer. FIXED.
  • Incorrect 3DT files - Vinci crashed if the index volume image contained indeces not listed in the 3DT file. FIXED. Now a generic VOI called "VOI[index]" will be generated on the fly.
  • A New Index Volume just created and saved but without VOIs yet could not be used in a following session. FIXED.
  • Project Save sometimes corrupted the image buffer of a newly created index volume with some newly created VOIs. FIXED.
  • Incorrect Logging - VOIs loaded from the 3DT-file were sometimes logged with incorrect indeces. FIXED.

Vinci 1.06.0, August 27 2003

• Volumes of Interest (VOIs) can be defined, modified and analyzed by the new VOI Define Tool. Most of the VOI framework is functional, however, mouse driven definition of VOIs and thresholding with connectivity analysis is still under development.
• VOI Types
  • Point - defined by position and radius i.e. a sphere shape;
  • Cuboid - defined by position, width and angle;
  • Ellipsoid - defined by position, width and angle;
  • Irregular - defined by a list of indeces.
• VOI data are saved in an image buffer (irregular type) and in the Vinci project file (cuboid, ellipsoid and point type).
  The image associated with a 3D-Tool's atlas file is automatically analyzed and will be handled as a set of irregular VOIs.

• Index Volume - Images with Index Volume data that got their properties (color, label, etc.) by a 3DTool's volume definition file will now save this linkage in the Vinci project file.
• Cut Synchronization Only and Image Focused CrossMarker will be saved in the Vinci project file now.
• Color Tool - the color palette stays inverted when pressing the MaxCols button.

• OrthoView: Toolbar - each OrthoView now has a toolbar with the following features:
  • links to Vinci's main widgets (LogView, LoadView, PlotsView),
  • shortcuts to several cursor modes (Cut, Move, Moving Cross),
  • opens up to three Contour and Fusion Tools. Depending on the resolution of your screen, the OrthoView will be resized and repositioned so the Contour Tools fit on the screen.
  • shortcut to close all toolboxes.
• OrthoView: Keyboard Shortcuts - three new keyboard shortcuts have been added: move the cursor to an OrthoDisplay and press "K" to open a Contour Tool, "F" for a Fusion Tool and Shift-Tab to close all Toolboxes. You might want to use Ctrl-D and Ctrl-Y to toggle between OrthoView window sizes with and without the Color Bars on smaller screens.
• OrthoView: Toolbox autoposition - selecting a target OrthoDisplay for a toolbox used to autoscroll that OrthoDisplay into the bottom part of the OrthoView if it was not entirely visible before. This feature is temporarily disabled and will be available as an option soon.

• Contour Tool - another complete redesign in the user interface, incorporating a lot of suggestions from our users (thanks to Johnny and Norbert). Note: if you switch off "Use Laplace Filter" (on by default) in advanced settings ("More...") you can create binary masks.

• PERL scripts - the PERL scripts for remote control of Vinci located in external/PERL/ have been rewritten: they now also start their private instances of Vinci and are generally much improved. We recommend ActiveState's ActivePerl distribution, all scripts should run immediately (if you have installed our demo data).

• SaveView - now allows to copy the geometry of another image for resampling. Furthermore, the user interface allows to modify more sampling parameters.

• Save Modified Check - before Vinci closes, it checks if the currently open project(s) need(s) saving. This check excludes window positions and time stamps. If the project's state has changed significantly, the user is notified. By default, this check is performed, you can switch it off in Extras:Options. This feature is not available in the "Lite" flavour of Vinci.
• DefaultProject - the Options dialog (Extras:Options) now can also be used to set the DefaultProject path.

• 3DTool's volume definition files - Vinci swapped the red and blue color channels. FIXED.
• Ortho Tools - opening a tool on an OrthoDisplay with invalid image buffer led to a crash. FIXED.
• TruePixel Mode fixes and more:
  • Profiles were computed on the border instead of the center of the pixels. FIXED.
  • Position of moved image wasn't always quantized to zoomed big pixel resolution. FIXED.
  • Contour Tool - changing from percent to absolute mode did not work correctly. Also the spin controls did not change the values of "From" and "To" in the advanced settings ("More ...") part. FIXED.

Vinci 1.05.0, August 04 2003

• Contours - several major changes:
  • Standard Contour Mode - when creating a new contour this new mode is used by default: the contour "width" is set to 0, the results resembles a "traditional" contour much closer. Please keep in mind that Vinci's contour tool also offers some features related to thresholded ROIs which we will exploit later. CAVEAT: if you load previous Vinci projects, "width" will not be zero, and you need to manually switch to the new mode and resave the project (advanced settings, open with "More..." button).
  • User Interface - more intuitive, we hope.
  • Laplace filter - bug fix, s.b..

• LogView - did not close while other parts of Vinci wrote into it. FIXED.
• License SplashScreen - wrote into already freed memory. FIXED.
• Zoomed OrthoView did show display bound Vinci Drawing Objects (profiles). FIXED.
• MMM - Multiple registration - registration results were not transferred to subsequent registrations when "from Magic Tool" was selected. FIXED.
• Image Volume Arithmetics - fixes and more:
  • new buffers - the tool - with the new buffer button pressed - did not generate completely new image buffers for the computation results when all empty image buffers were used up. Now it uses newly generated image buffers right from the beginning;
  • image types are now inherited from the type of the first image buffer used in the computation;
  • file names now start with the name of the first image used in the computation;
  • addition and substraction - the factor b of the second image volume was always set to 1; - FIXED.
• Clipping Profiles - did offset the image borders in zoomed images by +/- half of a zoomed big pixel on the display. FIXED.
• Contours Tool - the Laplace filter's caching mechanism was faulty, resulting (in some cases) in contour lines with "salt and pepper feel". FIXED.

Vinci 1.04.0, July 28 2003

• Clipping Profiles - the profiles tool provides a new button to clip a selected profile to the borders of the display and the border planes of the image buffer the OrthoDisplay is currently working on.
• True Pixel Mode - whether an image is shown in True Pixel Mode is now saved in the Vinci project file.
• ROI Define Tool - All planes statistics displays its results in transaxial display with the x-axis in the direction of the plane numbers.
• Profiles Tool - vertical profiles now start at the top of the display, i.e. for normally positioned images they have
  • the direction of the planes number (negative z-axis) for the coronal and sagittal displays;
  • the direction of the y axis for the transaxial displays.
• profiles default axis labels are now
  • mm for profiles with an image buffer not in true pixel mode.
  • planes number for vertical profiles in the coronal and sagittal display with an image buffer in true pixel mode; in this case the axis is scaled by the true pixel zoom factor as well;
  • display pixel else.
• MMM - Multiple Registration - first registration is performed using all registration levels (as usual). All subsequent registrations utilize only the last, highest-resolution level - a faster and more robust solution.

• Profiles Tool - profiles were not auto-renamed
  • after pressing the buttons Vertical and Horizontal;
  • when moved by the spin controls.
  FIXED.
• MMM - Multiple Registration - registration results were not correctly re-used in subsequent registrations. FIXED.
• ScriptDemo - MMM demo now runs without schema files and so without asking the user for permission to write such files.

Vinci 1.03.0, July 22 2003

• LoadPlugin: 3DT files - Vinci can now read 3DTool's volume definition files. The implications of which are quite interesting: we now support index volumes, i.e. Vinci images that carry VOI information (on a voxel level, and as label and color attributes). Vinci displays the VOI label belonging to the current mouse position in the Infoline and uses the colors defined in the 3dt files.
• OrthoView: Toolboxes - we hope that you also think that tool boxes have now more useful default positions: the new scheme takes into account which toolboxes are already open and where.
• Vinci Project: Save As - the GUI has been redesigned so you can now easily copy path and name of any image file (as this is usually near the location where you want to save a project file).
• Installer- the installer can now be invoked with options "/S /A" implying a silent default installation (S), for all users (A), i.e. shortcuts on the desktop and in the programs menu will be generated for all users of a system.
• Time Activity Curves - if no logfile given or if the logfile could not be opened the results will be logged to the Vinci LogView now.
• ScriptDemo - sports a host of new features, among them a "live" MMM registration. Please take a look (you will need to have the demo data installed) and let us know what you think.

• Computed Images - when saving a project, Vinci tries to save computed images with their default names (derived from their parents' names). Due to a bug this only worked for one computed image at a time. FIXED.
• The Color Tool did not inverse palettes for images with absolute values below 0.005. FIXED.
• Time Activity Curves - the tool did stop with incorrect error messages since Vinci 1.01.0. FIXED.
• MMM Tool - the Magic Tool crashed when being associated with the OrthoDisplay involved in a running MMM registration. FIXED.
• Image Volume Filter - did use an Active X Control to indicate progress of computation. In some cases this has caused unexpected behaviour if the control was not (correctly) installed on the target computer. The tool uses the standard progress bar now. FIXED.

Vinci 1.02.0, July 10 2003

• MMM - major redesign - in previous versions of Vinci, the MMM plugin generated a new image volume at the end of the registration process. We now transform the reslicing parameters directly to Vinci's coordinate system and use them with our online reslicer: by default, we will display MMM's current efforts every three seconds so you have immediate visual feedback. As Vinci uses several threads during registration, you can change the color and fusion (!) settings while MMM is working. As no additional image buffers are created, it is sufficient to just save the project file (CTRL-S). MMM also saves the current settings in the project file.

• Image Volume Filter - with the New Buffer button pressed generated image buffers are now really new i.e. they are not yet shown on any OrthoDisplay of the OrthoView. Computed images have a "*" in front of their names (which they now inherit from the images they are derived from). When the project file is saved, Vinci tries to save all computed images in their default locations.

• OrthoDisplay - Infoline - features a new button at the right hand side to (temporarily) hide/show the buttons on the left hand side so more space is available for displaying text.

• Image Volume Filter - some fixes
  • displayed image buffer number did not get counted up when all existing empty buffers were used up. FIXED.
  • apply button was accessible even with insensible source data. FIXED.
  • threads did not close when the OrthoView closed. FIXED.
• ScriptDemo did not close Color Tools in the Guided Tour. FIXED.
• MMM - crashed when the plugin was opened by the project file, and the Register button was pressed without modifying MMM settings first (initialization error). FIXED.
• Extras:Options - we gave an involuntary preview of our new Options user interface (using tab-control) in the last release which was and still is not yet ready for release. FIXED.
• Online Update - only killed running Vinci instances with name pattern 0.9* before installing a newer version (in some circumstances this prevented successful installation). FIXED.

Vinci 1.01.0, June 30 2003

• HRRT Resolution Measurement - a new plugin by Mark Lenox that computes a fwhm measurement on a (single) point source study.
• ToolBar, ToolBoxes, Protocol - Vinci now uses a number of custom classes to implement "tool palette look and feel" for the Toolbar, the Protocol (multiple Undo/Redo) and the Toolboxes with plugins (similar to corresponding widgets in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator or Macromind FreeHand):
  • drag frame - you can change the position of the main Toolbar and the Toolboxes by dragging their title bars (as before) or their frames.
  • keyboard shortcuts - the usual keyboard shortcuts mostly work now also from within the plugin, as changing from the plugin to OrthoView or PlanesView no longer changes the focus (main menu is always active).
• Global Context Menu - right-click anywhere on the main window background and you will get a new menu with options for showing/hiding, and positioning the ToolBar. Please let us know what else you might want to see on this menu.
• Gauss3D plugin - the user interface has been redesigned to provide a means for "in-place editing": by default, a copy of the target display's image will be subjected to a true 3D filter process and then displayed in place of the original. As we never overwrite the original image volume, you can repeat applying the filter with modified parameters should that be required. Please note: you can also "drop" images (use an OrthoDisplay's drag button "A", etc.) onto the "Parameters" box.
• Large Fonts - MS Windows offers a system wide "large fonts" setting (advanced graphics options) which is mostly relevant for machines with high-resolution displays. This setting directly affects the sizes of all standard dialog elements and the render size of system fonts. Vinci reacts to these changes in several ways. New in this release is a better handling of scaled system fonts: we now choose a more suitable font size for the ColorBar.
• LoadView - new keyboard shortcuts have been added for managing the history list.
  • CTRL-Arrow Up, CTRL-Arrow Down - to select next/previous entries
  • Arrow Up, Arrow Down - same as above, but only from inside the path field
  • CTRL-B - to display the entire history list.
• MicroPET headers - improved support for MicroPET image and sinogram data in the InfoView: Vinci now parses the original header file and displays the header information using HTML templates (same technique we use for ECAT7Image, HRRTImage, etc.) - so changing the layout and order of entries is very simple. Please let us know what you think. Well done, Carmen.
• OrthoView: Printing - cosmetic changes in the print templates for printing of OrthoDisplays, we now use (optionally) the full page width for (editable) header information.

• Save Image (ECAT 7) - we now adjust frame_start_time and frame_duration for each frame's image header, and also set num_planes in main header correctly. FIXED.
• ColorTool - when changing the color table, the current settings of the bottom and top sliders were not applied to the new table. FIXED.
• Color Tool - in certain circumstances (involving "MaxCols" and "Invert") it was possible to set a "negative" display range resulting in a faulty or missing color bar legend: we now make sure that Display Min < Display Max. Thanks, Christof.

Vinci 1.00.0, June 18 2003

• OrthoView: Printing - Vinci now supports template-driven printing and near-instant generation of electronic documentation in PDF (requires Acrobat Distiller or equivalent) also for OrthoViews. The same principles (optional institute-wide print templates with additional semi-/fully-automatic headers and logo) apply for printing of PlanesViews, please see Vinci 0.99.6 for details. We will add some further layout options for OrthoViews in the next release.

• Save Image - improved interface, now offering the options:
  • Use current Offset and Rotation - the re-loaded image displayed at the current cut position looks the same without prior move or rotation.
  • Make the current cut position the center of the re-loaded image - the default cut position (after start up or reset) of the re-loaded image is identical with the current cut position of the image.
  Please keep in mind that an offset, rotated or cut image may need a larger volume cube (i.e. more planes of a given pixel size) or it will be cut at the edges.

• PlanesView: Copy to Clipboard - similar to the new clipboard options for OrthoViews, you can now choose between several options for copying the current PlanesView to the clipboard (for inserting it in MS Powerpoint, MS Word, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, etc). All graphics can now be exported as either vector graphics (as before) or bitmap graphics. The latter offers an optional zoom factor that applies anti-aliasing to any text. You can export all matrices as formatted on screen or just the color bar (transparent, or with a solid background of your choice).

• OrthoView, PlanesView - new keyboard and menu shortcuts:
  • Invert current color palette: I, or menu entry.
  • Set current palette to Grayscale: G, or menu entry. Applying this option if Vinci is already using a grayscale palette will invert the current grayscale palette.

• Color Tool - different types of color synchronization:
  • Full - synchronizes palette and all parameters like data minimum and maximum, gamma and display minimum and maximum.
  • Palette - synchronizes the palette only and leaves the parameters as they currently are.
  • Project - full or palette synchronization for all images of the project.
  • OrthoView - full or palette synchronization for all images of the current OrthoView.
  • Red, Green and Blue Links - full or palette synchronization for all images in the red, green and blue link channel of the current OrthoView.
  • Unlinked - full or palette synchronization for all images of the current OrthoView that are in no link channel.

• Contours - Vinci did not update some contours under certain circumstances. FIXED.
• Save Image - the option Save in Resliced Position was ignored in certain circumstances. FIXED.
• PlanesView - Print - the WYSIWYG header preview used wrong line breaks with certain printers. FIXED.

• Save Image
  • current cut position - images were not always saved correctly in the current cut position. FIXED.
  • computed images - were sometimes displayed at a wrong cut position after save. FIXED.
  • Vinci project file - the save image view was not saved as part of the Vinci project file. FIXED.
  • pixelsize decimals - the dialog displayed only 5 decimals of the spixelsize of a given image. FIXED.

Vinci 0.99.6, June 13 2003

• PlanesView: Printing - Vinci now supports template-driven printing and near-instant generation of electronic documentation in PDF (requires Acrobat Distiller or equivalent). Template is an XML-based description of how Vinci is supposed to layout a page in a certain context. It contains information about some standard header information containing keywords like $PATIENTNAME, $DOSAGE_TYPE, etc. which will be replaced by information from the current image. A template can preset the PlanesView to geometries and layouts particularly suitable for certain image types (e.g. 6 x 8 planes for ECAT7 images); we also support printing of additional vector graphics (logo). This release contains a number of templates (in the template directory) which can be accessed directly (dropdown menu) from the PlanesView Print dialog. As the template menu is generated dynamically, this will be a good opportunity to introduce institute wide templates (with your institute's logo) that reside on a network share (work in progress).
  Please note that the header text is a WYSIWYG preview (including line breaks suitable for the paper format and orientation selected for your current printer). You can edit it, including style attributes (e.g. bold text, text color). A list box offers a range of all autotext elements available for the current image format which can be inserted in the header.

• Fusion - a black background in an image is now treated as transparent when rendering the fusion image.
• SaveECAT7 - saved images now inherit their parents' ECAT7 header information.
• MMM registration plugin - registered images inherit header properties (e.g. ECAT7 main and image headers) from the Resclice images.
• OrthoDisplay - now displays data units in the color bar.
• HRRTimage plugin - improved support for headers: more details can now be displayed in InfoView.
• InfoView - if an image in the image buffer list (right-hand side, bottom) is selected, pressing the PlanesView left to the list will open a new PlanesView showing that image buffer.
• Online Update - the update mechanism is now ready for Vinci 1.00.0, which is the next release.

• LoadView - Vinci refused to read the demo images since Vinci 0.99.2 when prompted to do so by IDL. FIXED.
• Load MINC plugin - if no information about pixel sizes and start offsets is given in the MINC file, Vinci will now make some educated guesses. FIXED.
• Magic Tool
  • The Details part of the tool was closed when you changed the display. FIXED.
  • The Cut position was wrong in [voxel] and [mm] if the image was shown in OrthoView TruePixel mode. FIXED.
  • The Reset Rsl Button did reset the color range. FIXED. We have a new button to independently reset the color range.
• Image Focused Cross Marker - the cross marker did not stay focused on a specific image feature when you changed from TriLinear to TruePixel reslicing mode directly after Vinci start up. FIXED.

Vinci 0.99.5, June 6 2003

• InfoView - all image data formats known to Vinci are now represented by distinctive icons in the InfoTree (left hand side) and the list (bottom).
• InfoView: list of images - clicking on the column headers will sort the list of images according to image ID, file name and path name, resp.
• Splash Screen - during startup of Vinci, and when saving project files, a small window with licensing information and the Vinci Logo is displayed in the bottom left corner of Vinci's main window. You can use Vinci immediately, you do not have to wait until this window closes automatically after a few seconds.

• InfoView - dragging an image from the new image list (bottom) onto an OrthoView produced the desired effect in Vinci 0.99.4: the image was displayed in the target display (where it was dropped). However, in certain circumstances Vinci used a wrong drag icon during the drag operation - mostly a "cosmetic" error. FIXED.

Vinci 0.99.4, June 5 2003

• LoadView - improved handling of long file names: even very long file names should now be displayed with their entire length when using the LoadHistory menu (use the button on the right hand side). We also scroll a file name so the last part is visible immediately.
• ToolBar - some icon cosmetics. Icons are now consistent with what we use in the OrthoDisplay/OrthoView context.
• Analyze Files - now have their own Image class and are no longer handled by Vinci's Image base class: we cache the original (binary) header, display header information and a distinctive icon in InfoView.
• Select Display Mode - the old Open Render/Sample Plugin button in the OrthoDisplay info line now shows the current display mode via icon and features a menu to change it or open the Render/Sample Plugin.
• Multiple Undo/Redo now works for OrthoDisplay settings (like display mode, sampling resolution and zoom method) as well.
• LogView - when active, the Edit menu now offers some options that can also be accessed through the right-mouse menu (s. Vinci 0.99.3). We have added the following keyboard shortcuts:
  • Copy (txt) - Ctrl-C: copies the selected text to the clipboard, (all text if no text is selected), using line-endings suitable for programs like Notepad.
  • Copy (Unix) - Ctrl-Shift-C: also copies the selected text to the clipboard but uses Unix line endings.
  • Delete Log - Ctrl-D: clears the online log.
  • Increase Font Size - Ctrl-Y.
  • Decrease Font Size - Ctrl-Shift-Y.
• PlanesView - if the PlanesView Property dialog is open, activating another window will temporarily hide this dialog, just as we hide ToolBoxes when their parent OrthoView is deactivated. This is to reduce the number of child windows that are not needed within a certain context.
• InfoView - the dialog on the left hand side of the new image buffer list (use that to modify a selection of image buffers: delete, reset or open several in one OrthoView of appropriate size) now is initially resized to an optimum width.

• OrthoView TruePixel mode: fixes and more
  • Non-TruePixel Zoom - A previous zoom in non-TruePixel mode no longer corrupts cut position and offset of the image if you change into TruePixel mode.
  • PlanesView Cut Synchronization now co-operates with images in TruePixel mode that were previously zoomed out of TruePixel mode.
  • Image Focused Cross Marker works now even with TruePixel zoomed images.
  • TruePixel Zoom itself no longer changes the cut position of an image.
  • TruePixel mode - Vinci now keeps the cut position of an image with "Image Focused Cross Marker" when changing into or out of OrthoView TruePixel mode.
  • Mouse-operated TruePixel Zoom correctly centers the image at the position of a mouse click.

• Contour Plugin - due to a rounding error, setting contours with the local Pipette cursor on the histogram did not work properly on images with a very small range of values. FIXED.
• Load Flat Image - when using the UINT8 data type Vinci tried to read signed Bytes instead of unsigned ones. FIXED.

Vinci 0.99.3, June 2 2003

• InfoView - redesigned with new list control for managing images (a "Norb" feature).
  • lists all image buffers of the current project
  • Multi-selection - keep <Shift> or <Ctrl> pressed when using the mouse to select a range or an arbitrary subset of the images in the list.
  • Delete image buffers - use the Delete button on the left-hand side of the list of image buffers to delete the selected image buffers.
  • Create new OrthoView - use the OrthoView button to create a new OrthoView that contains the selected image buffers. The OrthoView will be initialized to the appropriate number of OrthoDisplays.
  • Reset image buffers - use the Reset button to reset the selected image buffers, i.e. all reslicing and color settings will be set to default values (centered, grayscale).
  • Drag support - to set an OrthoDisplay to a particular image buffer, just drag it from the list onto that OrthoDisplay.
  • Use the InfoView:Show/Hide InfoTree menu (or keyboard shortcut <Ctrl>-B) to quickly hide the upper part of the InfoView in order to have more space for the image buffer list.

• InfoView - header support for HRRT Image data. Shows a summary of a current HRRT image header and also displays the raw header text. We have handled output of header information with HTML templates (see Vinci's Templates directory) since the very first versions of Vinci. Mapping any header structure (textual or binary) to some HTML output (any language) is very easy so we can adapt to suggestions (or changes of the HRRT file formats) quickly - please let us know how we can improve the output.

• ROI Define Tool - All Planes Statistics - now implemented for OrthoView TruePixel mode.

• Magic Tool - newly ordered, newly featured:
  • Link Channel Synchronized Reslicing - works on the image of the chosen display and on the images of all displays linked to the chosen display.
    • Save Rsl - saves the current reslicing parameters of the images on the linked displays.
    • Set Saved - sets the reslicing parameters of the images on the linked displays to the values last saved. If you haven't saved reslicing settings yet the parameters at the very moment you linked are used.
    • Cut Synchronization Only, Image Focused Cross Marker - check buttons to set this properties on the images of all displays linked to the chosen display.
  • All Images Synchronization - sets reslicing parameters, zoom parameters or color parameters of all images to the same absolute values.
  • Display Based Reslicing - works on the image of the chosen display only.
    • Save Rsl - saves the current reslicing parameters of the image on the chosen display.
    • Set Saved - sets the reslicing parameters of the image on the chosen display to the values last saved. If you haven't saved reslicing settings yet the original reslicing settings are used.

• LogView - printing, saving, copying, options:
  • Printing - prints all text with the current printer settings, use the Right-Mouse menu, or the standard File:Print menu entry.
  • Copy (txt) - copies the selected text to the clipboard, (all text if no text is selected), using line-endings suitable for programs like Notepad (Edit menu, Right-Mouse menu).
  • Copy (Unix) - also copies the selected text to the clipboard but uses Unix line endings (Right-Mouse menu).
  • Save (txt) [and Edit] - writes the log to a file, using line-endings suitable for programs like Notepad (Edit menu, Right-Mouse menu), optionally opens your favorite text editor.
  • Save (Unix) [and Edit] - same as "Save (txt)" but uses Unix line endings.
  • Delete Log - clears the online log.
  • Set Font - set all font properties. If you just want to change the size of the current font see below.
  • Increase Font Size - Right-Mouse menu, or Edit menu, keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-Y.
  • Decrease Font Size - Right-Mouse menu, or Edit menu, keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-Shift-Y.

• PlotsView Properties - the new property Float Values displays axis labels of integer-numbers with a trailing "0" to indicate that the value range of an axis is of a floating-point nature.

• OrthoView TruePixel Cut Position and Offset were not correctly handled. FIXED.
• PlanesView - OrthoView Cut Synchronization did not work in OrthoView TruePixel mode for sampling pixel sizes smaller than 256. FIXED.
• Save Image - pixel size in z-direction was ignored. FIXED.
• Color legend could have suppressed decimals if the legend range was less than 1. FIXED.
• LoadView - a multi-selection of files was not always sorted correctly (in alphabetical order, ASCII strict), also extremely long path names caused Vinci to abort a load operation. FIXED.
• Magic Tool, Color Tool - older project files that saved a Vinci session with open Magic or Color Tool did show the warning XML-Tag "SetLiveSelfSync" not processed for Magic A/Color Tool A. This was a "cosmetic" bug. FIXED.
• ScriptDemo - Guided Tour crashed after deleting the profile base line. FIXED.

• ScriptDemo - some parts of the "Guided Tour" demonstration do not produce the advertised results, esp. the fusion demonstration needs to be adapted to our new framework. We will mend our ways a.s.a.p.

Vinci 0.99.2, May 26 2003

• GNUPlot plugin - Vinci now understands a subset of the powerful GNUPlot command language and maps them to XML-based VinciScript. You can submit a file with GNUPlot commands (using "set" and "plot" commands, name of the file should be *.plt) to read data from other files (with comments and multi column data lines) to plot them in Vinci.
• PlotView: Print option - select a PlotView and then use "Print Setup" or "Print" from the File menu. Currently, Vinci scales a plot (preserving the aspect ratio) so that it fits on a page of the printer you have selected. We will add some fine tuning options (headline, footer, absolute size) soon.
• InfoView: Header info - we have a new engine to populate HTML templates (e.g. TL_ECAT7image_main.htm in Vinci's Template directory) with header information. We can now display part of the ECAT7 image header, other header information will follow soon. Thanks, Carmen.
• MPI-Tool protocol file - the rotation center is read in now.

• Load HRRT Image - a bug was introduced with the plugin's adaption for Time Activity Curves in Vinci 0.98.0. In certain circumstances a variable was undefined (no header or old header file) which lead to occasional (our favorite bug) crashes of Vinci immediately after loading of the image was completed. FIXED.
• Rotation Center was not placed in the correct cut plane. FIXED.
• OrthoDisplay Infoline - the icon shortcut to the Render/Sample Plugin opened the wrong plugin. FIXED.
• MPI-Tool protocol file
  • Two images in one protocol did crash. FIXED.
  • Flat images with special dimensions did not get read in automatically. FIXED.
  • Sampling pixel sizes other than 256 were not used correctly. FIXED.

Vinci 0.99.1, May 22 2003

• Contours
  • With some code resurrected from Vinci 0.60 (Oct 2001), this is an entirely new implementation with some, we hope, interesting new capabilities: similar to the new Fusion engine (introduced in Vinci 0.98.0) a display showing one or more contours can be enlarged by double-clicking it (repeat for further "zoom" steps, depending on your screen size, great for newer systems with 1600 x 1200 high resolution screens). All fusion layers and contours will be re-rendered automatically (using their "private" rendering engines), taking into account the new display settings.
  • In Vinci, Contours are generated as thresholded ROIs with an (optional) subsequent application of a Laplace-filter. Use the "Contour Tool" plugin to define a contour, e.g. by clicking onto the histogram. Each Contour is associated with one particular image buffer and each image buffer can hold up to four Contours (this is a somewhat artificial limitation, let us know if you need more).
  • Displaying Contours is an integral part of the new (extended) Fusion engine: each OrthoDisplay can have up to three "layers" for fusion display and contours. As each layer is associated with one image buffer, a total of 3 x 4 independent Contours can be shown on each OrthoDisplay. Use the "NFusion Tool" to combine Contour and Fusion settings as needed.
  • We apologize for being a tiny bit behind our original release estimate(s) for this feature.

• Linked image buffers
  • Cut Synchronization Only - with this new image property set on (which is the new default setting) link channels only synchronize the cut plane. Move, zoom, set rotation center and rotation itself only work on the image buffer in the OrthoDisplay you work on. You can set this property off in the link channel menu.
    Link channels that run with Cut Synchronization Only are marked with an colored ring. Fully synchronized link channels are marked by fully colored circles as before.
  • Cut position and rotation center are set absolutely again - so you have absolutely the same position of the cross marker on all (fully) linked displays.
  • Image-Focused Cross Marker- You can bind the cut plane to a position in the image so that an interesting feature stays in focus of the cross marker during movement and rotation of the image. This feature is set off by default now. You can change this setting in the link channel menu and under the new OrthoDisplay context submenu entry Options.
  • You can toggle between linked and unlinked state for the OrthoDisplay under the mouse cursor simply by pressing the T key.
  • General Undo/Redo - you can now completely undo and redo synchronous re-slicing for linked image buffers with the protocol-dialog and <CTRL>-Z, <SHIFT>-<CTRL>-Z accelarators.
  • Display-specific Undo/Redo Buttons - you can now completely undo and redo synchronous re-slicing for linked image buffers with the undo/redo buttons under each OrthoDisplay.

• MMM - new Button "Inverse" in the "Initial Estimate" dialog: use to invert the transformation parameters.

• OrthoView titles can be changed now in the OrthoView properties dialog.

• Update: Show Version History - after a successful Online Update or when this option is chosen, Vinci is supposed to display a (longish) Version History (in HTML-format) with your system's Browser of choice. The path to that file (inside the doc-directory of the current Vinci installation) was assembled using two different kinds of directory separators ("\" and "/") which worked seamlessly with Internet Explorer but caused irritating behaviour from some Browsers of the Mozilla/Netscape family. We now canonicalize that path which seems to mend that problem. FIXED.
• Arrow key driven movement of image buffer - the left arrow key moved the image buffer to the right, the right arrow key moved it to the left (since Vinci 0.99.0). FIXED.
• Moving Cross did not directly appear after cut mouse click on a linked display. FIXED.
• MMM - a bug in (re)using of estimates for registration and in loading/saving of transformation parameters from/to .mar files has been FIXED.

Vinci 0.99.0, May 15 2003

• Linking image buffers - at the moment at which you link two (or more) images buffers Vinci expects them to be
  • visibly co-registered either programmatically by e.g. the MMM_A tool or manually by re-slicing;
  • cut at corresponding points in three-dimensional image space.
• Linked image buffers
  • move, cut, zoom, rotate, set rotation center - you can re-slice synchronously now independent of the individual reslicing parameters of each image. Alas, we still have some exceptions which are listed in the last section.

• PlanesView - next neighbour and trilinear interpolation now show the images with equal pixel sizes in all directions.

• Sync Color/Reslicing by Drag and Drop - we have extended the previous drag and drop features of the OrtoDisplays: you can now drag an OrthoDisplay (use its "name button", e.g. "A") onto another OrthoDisplay and invoke several operations depending on the mouse button you use for dragging (left or right) and an optional modifier key.
  • Move/Copy OrthoDisplay Settings - drag one OrthoDisplay (using its drag button and the left mouse button) to another one: the destination OrthoDisplay will then show the previous settings of the source OrthoDisplay; hold the <CTRL> key to invoke a Copy, otherwise Vinci assumes you want a Move operation.
  • Sync Color and/or Reslicing Settings - drag one OrthoDisplay using the right mouse button, choose the appropriate operation from a menu that appears when you drop the OrthoDiplay on its target.

• Arrow key induced movement for Vinci Drawing Objects - you can move drawing objects like ROIs, profiles and Annotations by 1 pixel up, down, right or left just by pressing the corresponding arrow key if the cursor is in Arrow mode (Tip: you can quickly switch to Arrow mode by using <SPACE> when the OrthoView window is active). This affects all selected drawing objects of the orthogonal view under the mouse cursor.
• ROI Define Tool - All Planes Statistics - you can compute the mean, standard deviation, minimum, maximum of the selected ROI for all planes of an image buffer using the current reslicing settings. A plot with the corresponding curve is generated (e.g. plane[mm] vs mean[plane]).
  You can also compute plots for mean plus standard deviation and mean minus standard deviation or both at once.
  Consecutive computations for the same ROI will overwrite previous plots. The color of the plot is identical to the color of the active ROI.

• Online Update - the updater has been rewritten and will spawn a "helper" process that finishes the installation (executing the setup binary and subsequently starting the new Vinci version). Thus we avoid the embarrasing problems of the last updater which cropped up when updating from Vinci 0.98.0 to 0.98.1 (the previous updater used (and locked) a library which could not be overwritten in the installation/update process).
• Image Values in OrthoDisplay Infoline - were in certain circumstances not correct for all OrthoDisplays of an OrthoView that did not contain the current mouse position (the active OrthoDisplay was correct, however). Now the shown image values should be correct for all OrthoDisplays. FIXED.

• Linked image buffers - although many problems relating to the synchronization of linked images have been solved, manually co-registered images get unsychronized (so far) if you
  • open the magic tool;
  • use multistage undo / redo;
  • use undo / redo buttons under the OrthoDisplays.

Vinci 0.98.1, May 13 2003

• Time Activity Curve (TAC) Plugin - we now actually plot a curve (start time[frame] + duration[frame]/2, activity[frame]) and give proper units in the protocol file, also some more ROI properties (surface, volume).

• Color Management
  • Color Palettes - all builtin palettes have now been optimized so they use only a few interpolation nodes and can be easily modified with the Palette Editor (some palettes still had 256 "markers" in the previous release).
  • Compatibility - as all handling of palettes is now based on a more flexible and consistent description scheme, palettes are identified by a unique name rather than a table number. When loading older projects we now map the previous table numbers to the appropriate palette names (where appropriate; the last release mapped all table numbers to "gray", sorry).

• Palette Editor - when editing a user-defined palette and changing the color palette without pressing "OK" first, all changes were lost. FIXED.

Vinci 0.98.0, May 12 2003

• Color Management
  • Palette Editor - for user-defined palettes: WYSIWYG editor that supports several interpolation schemes for "algorithmic" palette generation, introducing a new XML-based description of palettes which is now used consistenly throughout Vinci - thanks Gerhard.
  • Favorite Palettes - maintains a user-defined list of palettes: your custom selection of palettes in a useful order.
  • ColorTool: Gamma - parameter to adjust color palettes in a non-linear fashion (similar to "Gamma" of IDL's xloadct).
  • Additional Palettes - some new palettes have been added that are similar to some well-known tables of the MPITool.
• NFusion plugin - (formerly called "Fusion") entirely redesigned: now allows to combine up to four (this number is now arbitrary) resliced images into one. Similar to Adobe Photoshop, we introduce a "layer" technique with "opacity" parameters.
• MMM - Multi Modality Matching plugin
  • Saving / loading of setup files - the Save Setup button enables saving of all MMM settings (in XML format): registration schemas, masking and filtering, selected reference and reslice image display(s), initial transformation estimate and output resolution. The Load Setup button loads previously saved settings and prepares MMM for an immediate start.
  • Saving of transformation parameters - resulting transformation parameters can now be saved in a native MMM format, Stereotaxy format (.mar files) or MNI-format (.xfm files). Support for the .xfm files is provided with no warranty due to insufficient documentation about the format of xfm files.
  • Initial transformation estimates - the "Initial Estimate" dialog now also contains edit fields for scaling, stretch rotation and intensity scaling. Transformation parameters can also be loaded from external sources: from a transformation file (MMM-, Stereotaxy-, MNI-format) from the Magic Tool: allows to make a coarse manual coregistration prior to an automated co-registration.
  • Registration schema "reslicing only" - with this schema selected, no registration is performed and reslice image is directly transformed using parameters from the "Initial Estimate" dialog.
  • New optimization parameter - intensity scaling: useful for single-modality registration with the Squared Difference measure. In the previous versions, intensity scaling was performed at the beginning of each registration only and was not included in the optimization process.
• Time Activity Curve (TAC) plugin - currently supports HRRT image and ECAT7 data types. Load any HRRT image of a multi-frame series into Vinci. Open the TAC plugin via the plugin menu, or an OrthoDisplay's plugin list. Reslice the image as appropriate. Use any of four ROI cursors (icon shortcuts on the plugin) to draw a ROI (Rect, Ellipse, Line, FreeHand) on any orthogonal direction, e.g. the transaxial view. We support multi-stage Undo-Redo; you can also morph one type of ROI into any other, add control points at a later stage, rotate them, scale them. Press "start" to begin TAC analysis.
• PlanesView - sychronization of OrthoView cut position
  • Double click - A double-click synchronizes the cut position with the plane (display) you double-clicked in all OrthoDisplays that show the image buffer currently sliced on the PlanesView. Alternatively you can use the context menu point Cut Synch.
  • CTRL double click - the exact mouse-position of your double-click is used to synchronize the cut position of all three OrthoParts of the OrthoDisplays. Alternatively you can use the context menu point Cut Synch 3D.
  • The cut plane of the OrthoView (i.e. the plane of the OrthoView cut position) is actually one of the shown slices in next neighbour and trilinear rendering.
  • The start plane is set automatically so that you can directly look at the cut plane (the plane next to the cut plane for original slices rendering) of the OrthoView. In fact, it is shown in the first display of the middle row.
  • cross marker - the actual cut position of the image buffer can be shown on the PlanesView cut plane. Simply activate CrossMarker drawing via context menu, PlanesView main menu or PlanesView properties. You cannot change cross marker settings - so far.
• PlanesView - mouse modes
  • Arrow mode - default mouse mode;
  • Cut mode - permanent synchronization of image buffer cut position. Try!
• PlanesView - default gaps. Coronal and sagittal planes will be shown with a default gap width of 10 pixel now, transaxial planes without gaps as before.
• PlanesView Properties - a new button named Default to re-set to default gap width and color.
• PlanesView Properties - a click on the gap color field will open Windows' native color dialog to choose an arbitrary gap color (entire RGB color space).
• PlanesView Infoline - OrthoParts are named T0, C0, S0 for original slices and T, S, C for next neighbour and trilinear reslicing.
• OrthoDisplay Infoline - OrthoParts are named T0, C0, S0 for TruePixel mode and T, S, C for next neighbour and trilinear reslicing.
• OrthoView - Zoom, Move and Rotate keep the cut plane now for mouse and magic-tool induced motion.

• PlanesView - reslicing operations in an OrthoDisplay showing the same image displayed by a PlanesDisplay caused that PlanesView to update immediately (adapting to the new reslicing settings) and activate: it moved to the front, on top of the current window. The PlanesView window will now update and stay in its current background position.
• PlanesView - the OrthoDisplay context menu entry "Reset Image Buffer" did not synchronize the reslicing parameter of the image buffer for PlanesView. FIXED.
• PlanesView - planes-number voxel-coordinates were correct. But z-axis voxel coordinates of a rotated image buffer had an offset. FIXED.
• PlanesView - Moving Cross did not correctly run for zoomed displays. FIXED.
• Cut position did slip away through rounding effects if the magic tool was open. FIXED.
• Magic Tool the displayed cut position (voxel) was not correct and not synchronized with the position (x,y,z) [mm]. FIXED.

Vinci 0.97.0, April 17 2003

• Happy Birthday - this History covers now more than one year of our team effort to improve VINCI - thank you all for your patience and the many good suggestions and discussions.

• PlanesView can now show cuts through an image in transaxial, coronal and sagittal direction for original slices as well as in the current resliced position of the image buffer.
• PlanesView - rendering methods
  • original slices - the transaxial, coronal or sagittal planes are taken directly from the image buffer without use of the reslicing algorithm;
  • next neighbor and trilinear - resliced planes can be computed with either next neighbor or trilinear 3D-interpolation.
• PlanesView can now show gaps of variable width and color between its displays.
• PlanesView - the displayed coordinates are now the voxel indices of the original image buffer.
• PlanesView - number of displays in x and y, zoom factor, displayed OrthoPart and the rendering method will be saved in the Vinci project file now.
• PlanesView Properties - whether the PlanesView Properties are open at all and their position are saved in the Vinci project file now.
• PlanesView Properties - the dialog will no longer skip to standard position when you press the apply button.
• PlanesView has the windows maximize button implemented now.
• PlanesView now always shows the maximum number of displays that - in the current position of the view - will not produce scrollbars.
• PlanesView - plane numbers can be written with shadow now.

• OrthoView: Bitmap Export - the CopyToClipboard dialog now also allows exporting of OrthoDisplays as bitmaps, a "screenshot" type of export with optional zoom (important for font aliasing). This type of export is well-suited for pasting into programs like Adobe Photoshop. If your graphics should retain vector properties (e.g. text can still be edited) use the "Metafile"-option (suitable for MS Powerpoint).
• OrthoView: "flicker fix" - by implementing a new background rendering technique, resizing the OrthoView (and many other operations that require redrawing of parts of Vinci's main windows) works a lot smoother.

• PlanesView did not show the correct values for zoomed displays. FIXED.
• PlanesView - moving cross did not vanish under the context menu on first call. FIXED.
• Magic Tool - sync-channels did not co-rotate correctly. FIXED.
• Multi-stage Undo / Redo on OrthoDisplays undid move, zoom, cut and rotate only for the image buffer on the display you really worked on and not for other image buffers connected via sync-channel. FIXED.
• The Multi-stage Undo / Redo Protocol would vanish if you moved the mouse over an open OrthoView. FIXED.
• MicroPET multi frame - loading of MicroPET multi frame files into a sequence of buffers has been working fine for some time. However, when saved in a Project file, the MicroPET frames were not loaded to the appropriate buffers. Saving of image settings (for images from MicroPET multi frame files) in Project files will now yield the expected behaviour, alas, older Projects need to be saved again.

• Fusion Mode - we are aware of some constellations that might even crash VINCI. However, we did not see a major need for fixing as the fusion mode is undergoing a complete redesign which is nearly complete and will address most of the issues we have had with fusion so far. Sorry we are not there yet.

Vinci 0.96.0, April 04 2003

• Vinci/Vinci Lite - this version is the first to distinguish between two different flavours of Vinci: a full version and a "Lite" version that has some limitations (e.g. saving of files is disabled, one OrthoView is limited to 5 OrthoDisplays). A license file is needed to upgrade Vinci Lite to the full version; we tried to make upgrading a simple and user-friendly process. Please use Extras:License and import the license file you have received by Email. More information is given in the Online Help (F1).
• Automatic Unit Transformation for PlotsView x-coordinates is provided by a new checkbox in the PlotsView Properties. Enabled, all plots will as far as possible use the same units for x-coordinates; disabled, the plots are shown in their default units. The default units of profiles are mm with offset.
  For now we provide:
  • plots w/o offset - all profiles, not only the horizontals and verticals, can now have the correct offset in the x-coordinates. So parallel profiles lying one over the other, running in the same direction but with different start point can now always have the same plot where they overlap;
  • scale to mm/display pixel - the x-coordinates of profiles can now be scaled to millimeters even in TruePixel mode.
• Clear All Image Buffers - new OrthoView context menu entry to delete all images of the current project.
• Close All - new menu entry in the File Menu to close all open projects including all of their open views.
• IDL examples - a new automated test - run every time Vinci is built - will hopefully prevent in the future any such problems as mentioned below.
• SaveView: Save History - similar to what the Load History offers, you can use the dropdown menu in the path edit to quickly change to previous settings of Save Plugin and path. If you click on an OrthoDisplay and the SaveView is open, it will adapt the file name but keep the current path.
• File associations - since version 0.95.0 Vinci offers improved support for explorer-interaction, e.g. opening of files by double-clicking them in an explorer window. The Extras:File Accociations dialog has been redesigned: it is now easier to choose which data formats Vinci should handle (by default) and which not.

• Profiles - plots of vertical and horizontal profiles were not always computed in correct direction i.e. the starting point - marked by the filled square if selected - had not the minimum x-coordinate in the plot. FIXED.
• Profiles - mm-scaling was not correct on displays that were not sampled in standard resolution. FIXED.
• PlotsView - "two profiles with the same units" and "one profile with and one without units" were not differentiated. FIXED.
• Multiple Undo/Redo - did not get properly initialized if there were more than one OrthoDisplay that carried drawing objects (eg. ROIs). FIXED.
• PlanesView: clipboard output - the size of the image for exchange via clipboard is now better adapted to your choices of plane size and number of planes.
• LoadView: File Browser - if the file in the path edit did not exist, the file browser did not open in the correct initial directory. FIXED.
• Image Volume Arithmetic & Filter - the tool did not always disable the Compute button to prevent the overwriting of images used in the calculation. FIXED.
• IDL examples - the IDL sample code did not run if Vinci was installed in a path with a blank in its name. FIXED.
• IDL examples - Vinci asked the user where to find the image directory $VINCIDIR since Vinci 0.92.0. FIXED.
• SaveView - Vinci now suggests sensible default file names for computed images again.

Vinci 0.95.1, March 25 2003

• PlotsView - the x-coordinates of profiles will now be scaled to millimeters if the image is not displayed in TruePixel mode. Otherwise the x-coordinates refer to display pixels, as before.
• OrthoDisplay Infoline - all OrthoDisplays in an OrthoView will now display the image value corresponding to the mouse position of the active OrthoDisplay.
• Drag & Drop of files - if more than one file is dropped onto an OrthoView, all files will be loaded now, not only the first one.
• Load MPITool ptc plugin - has been improved to also load flat file images.
• Load Flat plugin - now also supports the UINT8 data type. Furthermore, it will "guess" the setting for header offset based on the file size and the current settings.
• LoadView: Presets - LoadView Presets (an option to create a named shortcut for a specific load plugin and its settings, e.g. directory path, frame mode, etc.) have a new menu entry for editing the settings. Press the button next to the [File(s)] button to display the Presets menu.
• Multi-stage Undo/Redo now works for change of image buffers as well.

• Profiles Tool - creation of a new profile and changes to an existing profile in the tool did not change the plot since Vinci 0.94.0. Sorry! FIXED.
• Image Volume Filter did not un-lock image buffers when computing a gauss filtered image under very special circumstances on a zoomed OrthoView. FIXED.
• InfoView did not reflect the creation of images. FIXED.
• Newly created profiles did no longer get different colors. FIXED.
• Link Channel and Fusion - in some cases linked images (images in the same link channel, say "red") caused VINCI to crash in some Fusion configurations. FIXED.

Vinci 0.95.0, March 21 2003

• Saving of resliced image buffers - SaveView now supports writing of image buffers with their current reslicing settings, including an option to change the sampling parameters. Some more options will be available shortly.
• Explorer interaction - you can now
  • drag files onto a VINCI icon (shortcut) on the desktop to use that version of VINCI to open an image file (finally, Christof). If another instance of VINCI is already running, VINCI will ask if you want to use that instance to open your file or create a new one.
  • open image files by double-clicking them: use the new menu Extras:File Accociations to configure which type of files VINCI should open.
• LoadView: history - VINCI remembers the load settings for the last 20 images (default; you can change the limit in Extras:Options) you have loaded. This includes not only the file names but also the type of LoadPlugin, its settings and a time stamp. Use the drop down menu in LoadView to set up the load settings for images you have loaded recently. In contrast to a previous implementation of a Load History functionality in VINCI, this is a more global concept: as soon as a load operation has completed, the new entry in the load history is available to all VINCI instances running on that machine - all information is also stored (transparently in XML, as usual) in the project file.
• OrthoView: Drag & Drop - now also works between different VINCI projects and between different instances of VINCI (i.e. different processes), see section Enhanced support for drag and drop of the previous release.
• License information - when starting up, VINCI will now display a small window with license information (this will be site specific soon) in the lower left corner of its main window. The window will vanish after 5 seconds, but (it has its own thread) you can start working immediately and happily ignore it.

• Resource leaks - we have added some additional routines for automated stress testing during our development process (sequential loading of large number of projects with many OrthoDisplays) and have found that some system handles (User Objects, GUI handles) were not returned properly. FIXED.
• ECAT 7 multi frame - loading of ECAT7 multi frame files into a sequence of buffers has been working fine for some time. However, when saved in a Project file, the ECAT7 frames were not loaded to the appropriate buffers. Saving of image settings (for images from ECAT7 multi frame files) in Project files will now yield the expected behaviour, alas, older Projects need to be saved again. FIXED.
• Load HRRT Sinogram - some HRRT sinogram files with segment 0 data only were not read correctly in Auto mode. FIXED.
• OrthoDisplay: value at mouse pos - the values displayed in the InfoLines were not scaled to the images voxel sizes. FIXED.

• TruePixel Mode - still several glitches (cutting, synchronization), sorry. We plan to make TruePixel mode an image buffer (class) property which will solve most of our current problems.

Vinci 0.94.0, March 11 2003

• Rotation Mode (mouse-driven) for OrthoDisplays - you can now set a rotation center and rotate the transaxial, coronal or sagittal view by dragging with the mouse. You can activate the new mode by
  • pressing "R" on an active OrthoView window
  • using the right-mouse menu on an OrthoDisplay: "Rotation Mode"
  • selecting the appropriate entry from the cursor mode menu (next to the LinkChannel icon on the info line under each OrthoDisplay)
  Click on the OrthoDisplay to set the rotation center, then drag to rotate.
• Paste & Link for ROIs and Profiles - a very convenient feature for many routine situations where you want to evaluate the same ROI on different images.
  As in a normal Paste, you first copy an active ROI/Profile from any OrthoDisplay (shortcut: Ctrl-C, or right-mouse menu) and move the mouse cursor to the target OrthoDisplay. A call to "Paste" then (shortcut: Ctrl-V) will create a clone of the ROI/Profile, as before. A call to "Paste & Link Objects" instead (shortcut: Alt-V) will show an object that looks like a clone but is actively linked to the copied object.
  Internally, for VINCI it is in fact the same individual object shown on different OrthoDisplays. So if you change the properties of any one of these linked objects, all of "them" change size, position, color, etc.
  • Un-Link object - use this option from the right-mouse menu (or shortcut: Alt-Del) to turn a linked object (e.g. ROI or profile) into an independent one.
  • Delete linked objects - useful if you have, several (say: 30 - it works) OrthoDisplays all subscribing to the same ROI (another way to look at the internal mechanism): use this option from the right-mouse menu (or shortcut: Ctrl-Del) after having clicked on one of the ROIs - all will be deleted except the one you work on.
  • in preparation: a plugin for a tabular representation of all active ROIs.
• Enhanced support for drag and drop - you can now drag image data (e.g. ECAT7 type) onto an OrthoDisplay: a new image buffer will be created and displayed in the OrthoDisplay where you dropped the file (from any explorer-like file browser). Even more interesting is the drag and drop support inside VINCI: to clone an OrthoDisplay just drag the button of its title line ("A", "B", etc.) to another OrthoDisplay - even one in another OrthoView (you can quickly create new OrthoViews with shortcut Ctrl-N from within another OrthoView). To see how it is done (with XML-based VinciScript) drop an OrthoDisplay drag handle onto an open WordPad, Word, etc. window (not NotePad). CAVEAT: this does not yet work for different projects and different instances of VINCI.
• OrthoDisplay InfoLine - now also gives position in the original image coordinates (sorry for the delay, Prof. Wienhard), and displays data units for some image formats.
• New Link Channel options - the link channel menu (under each OrthoDisplay, between tools menu and cursor menu) features several new entries applying link options to all OrthoDisplays of an OrthoView (which is helpful if you use dozens of OrthoDisplays at the same time - thanks for waiting, Prof. Graf).
• PlotsView - the data units of the Ecat 7 images are now automatically used in the plots.
• Undo & Redo has been extended for deletion and insertion of points into Polygon ROIs. If you have not already done so we encourage you to take a look at the Undo-Redo protocol (shortcut: Ctrl-Alt-Z) which is dynamically updated while you work.
• MINC Save plugin - VINCI can now also save data in MINC format.

• Undo/Redo Protocol - keyboard shortcuts (s. 0.93.0) did not always work from inside the Protocol dialog. FIXED.
• Profiles Tool - the action of the Apply button did not synchronize with other tools working on the same OrthoDisplay. FIXED.

Vinci 0.93.1, January 24 2003

• MMM plugin - will now position the OrthoView with the reslicing result(s) in a more intelligent way (taking into account the size of your screen). It will also assign a link channel (red) to appropriate OrthoDisplays, so you can check the reslicing quality immediately using cut, move and zoom operations that are synced on reference image and resliced image(s).
• Import MPITool protocol files - an experimental module to import ECAT 7 images and their reslicing settings from a standard MPITool *.ptc-file. It already handles UNIX-style paths in a useful manner: you can map them to (network) directories of your PC. If the plugin cannot access images that are referenced in the protocol file it first looks in the parent directory of the protocol file (that covers most cases). We are confident that this new plugin, with some improvements over the next releases, will turn out to be quite popular (if you use or have used MPITool protocol files).

• MMM plugin - Vinci crashed after running a registration procedure - a very unnecessary glitch in Vinci (not in MMM), we apologize. FIXED.

Vinci 0.93.0, January 23 2003

• Multi-stage Undo/Redo, Protocol - as a "by-product" of automated testing (s. "Automated Tests" of Verson 0.92.0), we can now offer very comfortable, global Undo/Redo functionality. Similar to Adobe Photoshop 6.0/7.0 we also now provide a Protocol widget ("history" in Photoshop) that lists the entries of the Undo/Redo-buffer: you can go back and forth between different states by clicking on an entry - all entries between the target state and the current position will be "undone" or "redone", resp. The Protocol widget is a non-modal dialog, so it is updated while you work. You will notice that when e.g. moving objects or applying color settings with a slider, Protocol entries will only be created when a mouse driven action is finished.
  • Undo - Ctrl-Z
  • Redo - Ctrl-Shift-Z
  • Protocol - Ctrl-Alt-Z
  Undo/Redo can also be invoked via the Edit menu (as in many other programs, not many support multi-stage, though). It will be available for most aspects of routine work with Vinci. The current implementation supports Undo/Redo of almost all operations on an OrthoDisplay (reslicing: cut, move, zoom, ROIs: creating, moving, scaling, etc., Color settings for any image buffer: color tables, min/max values).
• File Path Relocation - (s. 0.92.0) has been improved and can now also handle UNIX-style directory names and works for relocated project files.
• Load Interfile Plugin - has been extended to read some additional flavours of Interfile data.

• Color Tool - the buttons "DatMax" and "Min" now set the display range to the global maximum and minimum of the current image buffer, they did not do anything at all in the last release, sorry. FIXED.
• PlanesView - the properties dialog did not resize properly in all Windows configurations to accomodate the Color plugin. FIXED.
• ROI-define plugin - two plugins working on different OrthoDisplays did synchronize their selected ROI via its position in the ROI-list. FIXED.
• Profiles Tool and ROI-define plugin - the selected profile / ROI was not saved in the project file and not synchronized with other Tools working on the same OrthoDisplay. A new Tool working on the same OrthoDisplay was not initialized to show the same profile / ROI. FIXED.
• Profiles plugin, Text-define plugin and ROI-define plugin - if a new tool was opened via right mouse key context menu, the Vinci drawing object under the mouse was selected in the new tool, but not in other tools working on the same image buffer or OrthoDisplay. FIXED.
• Profiles Tool - the list-selected profile was not selected for mouse-action on the OrthoDisplay. FIXED.
• Polygons - the state of the handles was not saved in the project file and not copied via the clipboard. FIXED.

Vinci 0.92.0, January 16 2003

• Automated Tests - we have incorporated a lot of infrastructure for automated testing during our normal development cycle. The test framework includes a macro recorder so we can play back and model GUI behaviour. We will provide some more information on this shortly.
• File Path Relocation - if you open a Vinci Project and Vinci cannot load an image file you will now be asked if you want to look for that file. The new path can then be used for all subsequent load operations. This is very useful if you have moved your image data to a different (network) drive or directory since you saved the project file.
• Image Volume Arithmetics - now also covers multiplication and division of image buffers.
• Image Volume Arithmetics - the computation will no longer be hindered by different pixel sizes. The user will be warned, though.
• ROI2D define - improved layout.
• Save ECAT7 images - now supports writing of multi-frame files. CAVEAT: we currently only write "native" image buffers, i.e. any reslicing information is lost. However, this is exactly what you need to save results from our automated matching tool (MMM).

• Load HRRT sinogram - trying to read a sinogram file that contained segment 0 data only, short integer format, no header file, resulted in a crash. FIXED.
• Image Volume Arithmetics and Image Volume Filter did not re-act to new images in the OrthoDisplay(s). FIXED.