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| Version 3.1 Release Notes | [ All Release Notes in PDF ] |
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| General |
New:
- During the installation of the new version the configuration of the previous version can be imported.
- New color tables added.
- The list menu of the color tables now includes icons representing the coloring of the different tables.
- New interface to the ITK (Insight Toolkit). It is exploited by a new external tool which allows to apply 28 image processing filters, and in the segmentation tool which offers ITK-based segmentations.
- A pipe tool was introduced for multistudy processing. For example: Loading [scaling | smoothing | replacing ] saving.
- A new external tool was added for starting scripts of the operating system.
- Dual-screen support: Menus are correctly shown, and dialog windows are shown on the secondary screen.
- Printing of the help pages is supported.
Changed:
- When merging loaded series into a dynamic study the user can define which series are used and in which order.
- When merging loaded series which cover parts of an object (table positions) into a single study the user can define which series are used and in which order.
- The logging was improved.
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| DICOM Database Server |
New:
- Free text search in the study and series descriptions.Viewer for loading JPEG and TIFF images which are saved in the database.
- Free text comments which are related to certain image series can be saved in the DB.
- New "Flat" selection mode with all series in a single list.
- Ability to switch off list updating after every change of a filter element.
- Transaction Server: A facility was added which generates an operating system specific starting script for the transaction server.
- Arrow buttons added for stepping through the patients list.
- It is now possible to filter for more than one modality by an OR combination.
Fixed
- Sometimes entries remained in the Projects list although all related data had been removed.
- Sometimes could disappear from a patient, although the user had chosen not to delete the attached components when deleting images.
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| VOIs |
New:
- Regular geometric VOIs were added which are not consisting of ROIs, so that they can be scaled in all directions. With this function an enclosing VOI can much quicker be defined.
- Single pixels can be added or removed from a VOI.
- Extended operations on the contour level. Contours can be additive (adding the included pixels) or subtractive (removing the including pixels) for the VOI.
- Facility for applying operations at the contour level.
- Extended operations on the VOI level. VOIs can be merged to form new VOIs. During the merge, VOIs can be additive or subtractive, as the contours. This allows to easily create VOIs with hollow inclusions.
- AND operation with a mask (eg gray matter). Only VOI pixels are considered in the statistics which are also in the mask.
- Definition of a new VOI which consists of the pixels along a line.
- New solution for the case when the data origin has changed which causes the VOIs to be shifted. The VOI origin can be adjusted to the new data origin.
- Splitting of a VOI into a set of VOIs on the ROI or contour level.
- The VOI ordering in the list can be changed.
- Insertion of vertices into a closed contour at any position is now possible.
- An eraser of configurable size and shape was added for quickly removing ranges of vertices.
- The hammer tool now has a configurable size.Default sizes for the regular objects can be saved.
- Drawing contours and Iso-Contours are now also possible in NxM layouts.
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| PKIN |
CAUTION:
Significant Change related to Compartment Models: In prior versions the whole-blood contribution in the operational equation was calculated by interpolation of the whole-blood activity at frame midpoint and multiplication with the frame duration. The calculation has now been changed to the integration of whole-blood activity during the frame duration using the interpolation model of the whole-blood curve. This calculation represents a better approximation of the imaging physics and tends to result in a better modeling of the initial part of the TACs.
As a result of this change, the model curves calculated with version 3.1 differ from that of prior versions, and correspondingly fitting results will also differ. Particularly, the default value of vB may have to be revised.
Change of the Lumped constant for the FDG models. The old default value of 0.437 was replaced by a new value of 0.89. This value had been determined by Graham et al (J Nucl Med 2002; 43:1157-1166) using 11C Glucose and FDG in 2002. Their results: Normal brain: 0.89+/-0.08; cerebellum: 0.78+/-0.11.
New:
- Support for Randomized fitting. Random sets of initial parameters are generated and the data fitted. The parameter set among the results with has minimal chi squared is returned as the fitting estimate. Hereby the potential of getting stuck in a local minimum is reduced.
- Option for Automatic parameter initialization of compartment models using linear least squares estimates before starting the fit.
- Facility for establishing User-defined initial parameters per model.
- Improvement of the History functionality. It is now a list to which the user can add manually, and from which he can delete entries. The list shows the model configuration with the estimated parameters and fit criteria. Therefore it can also be used for quickly comparing the results with different model configurations.
- Support for Data cloning into an additional window which can be used for a side-by-side comparison of models.
- Comments can be added to a data set, and later edited.
- Noise can be added to TACs in the Edit Data dialog.
- Whole-blood and plasma data can be loaded from a single file.
- New model: linear least squares method for 1- and 2-tissue compartment models with blood spillover.
- The definition of the valid samples can now be copied to all regions.
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| PXMOD |
CAUTION:
The lumped constant for the FDG models was corrected from the old default value of 0.437 to a new value of 0.89.
New:
- New model: Iterative fitting of a 2-tissue compartment model with ridge regression. This model allows controlling the degree how much the individual parameters may be adjusted from their initial values.
- Option for separating the blood curves and the tissue TACs into two separate curve displays to improve visibility on small displays.
Changed:
- 2-tissue compartment model: was extended by additional output parameters (Vt, Vs, k3/k4, flux, ssq).
- Partial volume correction method 2: the gray matter threshold is now applied to the smoothed segment, not the original. This reduces the overcorrection problem along the mask boundaries.
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| PFUS |
New:
- Brain Normalization II: Default configurations which sets appropriate parameters for human or small animal applications. (Note: Brain Normalization I should NOT be used for small animal applications).
- Templates of the rat brain added for normalization, matching and VOI statistics (courtesy of Wynne Schiffer).
- Added the functionality to save all registered images at once.
- Optional identity line added to the 2D scatter plots of VOI pixel values.
Changed:
- VOIs can now also be enabled in the Scientific Output of PFUS.
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| P3D |
New:
- Selection of objects directly in the scene by double-clicking.
- When rendering VOIs, their color is used for surface shading.
- Support for more than one set of orthogonal planes.
- By using thresholds, the pixels below a certain value can be set to transparent in the planes.
- Plane definitions are also saved in protocols.
- Support for more than one marker.
- Choice to enable automatic refreshing after changing the VR properties.
- Various ITK segmentations available.
Changed:
- Revision of the user interface of the control section.
- Planes are now also objects in the tree.
- Organization of the color profiles for volume rendering improved.
- Navigator window is no more hidden in certain situations.
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| PCARD |
New:
- Save protocol function for easily saving all information related to a data processing (data, transformations, VOIs). Allows to exactly reproduce a data analysis.
- New default for setting the start time of the first frame to zero.
- New default for rotating the loaded images to anatomical orientation. This makes the automatic reorientation procedure more robust.
- Different default reorientation for Humans and Animals.
Changed:
- Scaling in the reorientation function was disabled.
- More significant numbers are shown in the data investigator of the polar plot.
- RV and LV VOIs are no more required for the processing of static scans.
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| Data Formats |
New:
- Native support for JPEG compressed DICOM loader which avoids the use of the JAI ImageIO library which was not available on Mac.
- DICOM Advanced settings: Default button added.
- DICOM Server: A facility was added which generates an operating system specific starting script for the DICOM server.
Fixed
- DICOMDIR: Under certain conditions (records including sequences) the system hanged after deleting a file based on the DICOMDIR listing.
- DICOM: When scanning a read protected folder an error occurred (mainly MAC, Linux)
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| Java Runtime Environment (JRE) |
- On Windows and Linux systems a dedicated JRE is installed together with PMOD and used for the execution of the program. Therefore, automatic upgrading of Java by the operating system should not affect the PMOD installation.
- On Mac OS X systems the internal JRE is used and therefore the PMOD installation might be more vulnerable to system updates. PMOD 3.1 has been tested on Snow Leopard (10.6) and Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_15-b03-219) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 14.1-b02-90, mixed mode)
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| Version 3.0 |
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| General |
New:
- Inclusion of the database and DICOM server functionality (which were a separate option) into the base license.
- During installation, a java runtime environment is extracted together with the PMOD program. This runtime will be used for running PMOD. The advantage is that it will not be changed by automatic updates, and that all libraries are properly included.
- Export functionality for the values of all curves in the curve area.
- High-quality capture of image are including color bar (Scientific Output).
- Additional color lookup tables.
- Selectable width for grid overlay to appropriately cover animal studies.
- Different shapes for the plane intersection point in the orthogonal display.
- Value inspection window when pointing at points in curve area.
- Selection of different PET nuclides in the SUV dialog.
- External plug-in for averaging of slices and/or time frames.
- External plug-in for Segmentation and mask generation.
- External plug-in for basic numeric transformations (log, exp,..).
- Division function in the scaling tool.
- Calculation of the average/stdv image as a new tool in PVIEW.
- Loading: Interpolation to an arbitrary pixel size.
- Some tools moved to detachable taskbars.
Changed:
- No license checkout for servers (DICOM, Database)
- The configuration of internal precision was removed. The need for float precision is now automatically determined.
- More flexible annotations in reports.
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| DICOM Database Server |
New:
- Support for an embedded database (JavaDB, also called "derby"). MySQL is still supported, but not provided any more with the distribution.
- Functionality for the replication of data between databases is now available in the database image loader.
- Testing of database response in the configuration, similar to DICOM C_ECHO.
- Support for encrypted/compressed communication with remote databases.
Fixed:
- There was a potential problem when saving component data (VOIs etc.) to a
transaction server, depending on the disk performance of the server. To avoid this
problem both the transaction server and the clients should use version 3.0
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| Volumes Of Interest |
New:
- Mask by VOI number for generating template images.
- Contours can now also be outlined in the coronal or sagittal orientations.
- Undo function for contour VOIs.
- Cropping the image volume to VOI bounding boxes.
- Single-button creation of an atlas from an image and the outlined contours.
Changed:
- Revised user interface to enlarge the available image space.
- Calculation of TACs: up to 5 times faster.
- Creation of VOI masks from a number of hottest pixels (external tool).
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| General Kinetic Modeling |
New:
- Functionality for metabolite correction which includes fitting of parent fractions with different models and the usage of population correction curves.
- Ability to directly copy of the parameters from the overview panel to the clipboard.
Can be pasted into Excel.
- "Details" tab with new fit quality parameters (coefficient of determination, residuals root mean square) and criteria for model comparison (Schwartz criterion, Runs test).
Changed:
- Menu reorganized and moved to the lower left corner.
- When loading .km files from a database, patient/study information is overwritten by the contents in the database.
Fixes:
- Bolus/Infusion Optimization had a problem when measured weights were used during fitting and simultaneous fitting of the plasma parameters was enabled.
- The calculation of the sensitivity function used parameter changes which were too big (100% instead of 1%).
- Blood delay fitting sometimes failed due to a problem in resampling with negative times.
- Fix for calculation of standard deviations in curves created in the Edit Data tool.
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| Pixel-wise Modeling |
New:
- SRTM2 model for BPnd calculation with fixed k2'.
- 1-tissue compartment model with ridge regression (Zhou GRRSC).
- Threshold parameter in the model pre-processing section to allow for background masking.
- Possibility to outline VOIs and save them as TAC definitions for the PXMOD models.
- Mask files can now be selected for masking the processing.
Changed:
- The MA1 model was removed as a standalone model; it is included in the model which calculates the distribution volume by 3 different methods.
- It is no longer possible to directly return a corrected input curve from PKIN to PXMOD.
- The whole blood activity must be defined in the blood dialog, not any more in the pre-processing dialog (2-tissue compartments model, 1-tissue compartment models).
- When a model processing is interrupted, the calculated pixels are displayed.
Fixed:
- Some problems with batch mode were solved.
- BPnd values calculated with SRTM method were not correct in early builds of version 2.95.
- The configuration of value units was not properly applied when loading certain blood files.
- Batches with only a single batch operation failed.
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| Image Fusion |
New:
- Automatic matching and normalization can be started for all loaded series, not only one-by-one.
- Support for independent manual transformations of the frames of a dynamic study.
- Toolbar with shortcut buttons for the most important tasks.
Changed:
- Brain normalization II now includes a resampling grid randomization to avoid local minima. Consequently, the result may vary slightly between runs.
- Adjusted order of the rotation buttons for a more intuitive behavior.
- Transformations are always applied when data is loaded ("Auto" check box removed).
Fixed:
- Due to an interpolation problem there had been a slight shift of the resliced images by 1/2 of the original pixel size.
- The combination of set landmark and manual matching are now correctly saved/replayed in protocols.
- SPECT template replaced (left and right were mirrored before).
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| 3D Image Rendering |
New:
- Synchronization of two movies with the real time scale.
- Ghost objects to configure rendering options beforehand.
- Interpolation to isotropic pixel size during loading to reduce the flipping effects of VR objects.
- Control over smoothing during segmentation.
- Segmentation of a definable number of hottest pixels.
- Annotation in the 3D scene by adding a Note
Changed:
- VR controls are now also in the properties area, not in a separate dialog window.
- More control over opacity function
- Some detachable taskbars.
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| Data Formats |
New:
- Memory usage optimized for large DICOM objects
- Added: Loader for NeuroStat files
- Philips format: support for SUV-related information.
- Philips format: Support for Syntegra CT data.
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