Job Jar/Streamline library

Tubegen represents streamlines/tubes in several different formats in memory and on disk, and this format is distinct from the representations used by well-established third parties, for example FSL, Camino, and DTK. The core of any representation, though, is quite simple: a collection of streamlines, in which each streamline is just an ordered list of vertex points in 3-space. The tricky bit is that we want to be able to associate scalars with these datasets at many levels:

• the whole collection (for example, the average length of the streamlines)
• each individual streamline (ex: the length of the streamline)
• each segment of each streamline (ex: distance to the nearest segment; color values related to the orientation of the segment)
• each vertex point of each streamline (ex: the interpolated FA value at that point)

The data format should also include a description (say, a string) for each scalar value so that its interpretation is unambiguous.

Ideally, we want to be able to transparently read and write streamlines generated by each of the four programs listed above, as well as interact with the data in memory using standard interfaces (STL containers and possibly standard C arrays). The [DTK streamline format] is excellently designed and would be a great starting point.

Matlab I/O code would also be very useful.

Jadrian has already written a lot of code to do this kind of thing, so it might make sense to talk to him and leverage his work in the process of creating this library. Cagatay also works with streamlines a lot and would probably have useful input.