About QuickVol II

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Rationale
 
There exist several excellent tools for the analysis of fMRI and MRI data (just a few include: AFNI, SPM, 3D Slicer, Stimulate, and MIVA) so why build another?

As its name implies, QuickVol II is a simple tool designed to enable quick browsing and visualization of MRI and fMRI data, transformation and co-registration of volume data sets, and ad-hoc computations using transformed volumes as inputs, from any Java® enabled platform.

QuickVol II addresses the needs of investigators who would like a single, platform independent application to assess data as it comes off of the scanner, with a flexible interface to explore different analysis strategies (through ad-hoc computations).

Novel experimental designs (such as pharmacological fMRI of investigational compounds) often generate data for which an established analysis protocol does not exist. In these cases, it is up to the investigator to determine what computational approach is needed to test the hypotheses of the work, and generate statistically significant and meaningful inferences from the data.

As a bonus, the expiration of GE's patent on the Marchng Cubes algorithm for surface extraction enables even basic applications like QuickVol II to generate 3D models from multi-slice data, which can be rendered in photo-realistic quality by third party tools such as POV Ray.

How do I get started?
 
Proceed to the launch page to get started.

Citing use of this software
 
If you find these tools valuable, we're really pleased. We ask that you please cite their use with the original QuickVol paper:

Schmidt KF, Ziu M, Schmidt NO, Vaghasia P, Cargioli TG, Doshi S, Albert MS, Black PM, Carroll RS, Sun Y. Volume reconstruction techniques improve the correlation between histological and in vivo tumor volume measurements in mouse models of human gliomas.
J Neurooncol. 2004 Jul;68(3):207-15.

Acknowledgements
Where would we be without ImageJ? Many thanks to Wayne Rasband for this example of the impact that platform independent and open source software can have on a community. QuickVol II was created with the support of the Center for Comparative Neuroimaging at UMASS Medical School. It is based on QuickVol I which was originally created as a byproduct of work performed with Dr. Yanping Sun at The Small Animal MRI Laboratory at Brigham & Women's Hospital. Some data displayed on this website is also the work product of Drs. Mateo Ziu, Nils Schmidt, and Rona Carroll's team at Harvard Medical School, Brigham & Women's Hospital. Dr. Robert Laramee's Java implementation of the MarchingCubes cases provides QuickVol II's surface reconstruction capabilities.

Contact the author
 
Please feel free to contact me with any questions:
Karl Schmidt (karl.schmidt at umassmed.edu)
Doctoral Candidate, Program in Neuroscience UMASS Medical School
A note on automation of the calculations in QuickVol II. In the past users have used the excellent macro recording tools in ImageJ to automate plugins of the MRI Analysis Pak, such as T1 and T2 calculations. This strategy is ill-advised for QuickVol II, and I recommend that you contact me to discuss the development of scriptable tools for automated data processing, using the underlying code of the QuickVol II application.

What are the terms of use?
 
QuickVol II is free for use in research applications. It is not validated software, and is NOT suitable for ANY clinical applications.