Vida

VIDA: (Registered Trademark of and Copyrighted to VIDA Technologies L.L.C) Since the first dynamic volumetric studies were done in the early 1980's on the Dynamic Spatial Reconstructor (DSR), there has been a surge of interest in volumetric and dynamic imaging using a number of tomographic techniques. Knowledge gained in handling DSR image data has readily transferred to the current use of a number of other volumetric and dynamic imaging modalities including cine and spiral CT, MR, and PET. This in turn has lead to our development of an image display and quantitation package which we have named VIDATM (Volumetric Image Display and Analysis). VIDA is written in C, runs under the UNIX operating system, and uses the XView toolkit to conform to the Open Look graphical user interface specification. A shared memory structure has been designed which allows for the manipulation of multiple volumes simultaneously. VIDA utilizes a windowing environment and allows execution of multiple processes simultaneously. Available programs include: oblique sectioning, volume rendering, surface display with movie scripting, region of interest analysis, interactive image segmentation/editing, algebraic image manipulation, conventional cardiac mechanics analysis, homogeneous strain analysis, tissue blood flow evaluation, etc. VIDA is built modularly, allowing new programs to be developed and integrated easily. An emphasis has been placed upon image quantitation for the purpose of physiological evaluation.