View source for Slicer3:About

== Vision for Slicer 3 (for biomedical and other users without a computer science background) ==

Slicer 3 is envisioned as a software platform that is both easy to use for researchers and easy to extend for programmers, while maintaining the high level of functionality needed to support sophisticated science. The NA-MIC engineering core took on the task of designing an architecture for Slicer 3, the broad-strokes requirements of which are:

# to preserve features of Slicer 2.x that are needed by the user community (comprehensive visualization ability, various modules for segmentation, registration, DTI analysis, volume measurements, ...)
# to add new functionality desired by the computer science community (ease of adding new modules, ease of interfacing existing to non-slicer software modules, scalability to grid architectures, automated graphical user-interface testing)
# to design the new platform such that some of the new features requested by the user community (such as undo-redo facility, improved 3D rendered images) are significantly easier to implement.

Some specific features planned in Slicer 3.0 are as follows:

* New 2D GUI widgets with potential for automated testing of GUI functionality, plus high level widgets to support advanced imaging capabilities (e.g., transfer function editor)
* New 3D interaction widgets for direct manipulation and measurement of data
* Lowering the effort to add functionality
* New way to integrate external programs (execution model) as Slicer modules, including ITK
* Improved modularization and plug-in architecture
* Rearchitecture of the data and scene description
* Rearchitecture of the coordinate system structure
* Upwards compatible for the core functionality with Slicer 2.6 from a user perspective
* Easy porting of slicer 2.6 code
* Support Undo/Redo facility for interactive editing
* Usability guidelines to promote software consistency

For users of Slicer 2.6:

* Slicer 3.0 will maintain the core functionality of previous versions, but with a cleaner and more integrated user interface.
* Slicer 3.0 will import scenes from previous versions of Slicer.
* NA-MIC will provide updated tutorials and documentation to help people use Slicer 3.0.
* The Slicer team will be available to help with the transition.