Hi!<br><br>Our research group is considering using VTK (or some higher-level library like Mayavi/TVTK) for visualization of blood flow in the heart. Data is available as three-dimensional, time-resolved velocity fields measured using Phase Contrast MRI. Additionally, we have animated anatomical slices of the heart. <br>
<br>All datasets are sampled over one heart beat (or a part of the heartbeat for technical reasons), but with different timesteps. For example, the velocity data might have 40 timesteps and the anatomical slices 25 or 30.<br>
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This data is inherently time-resolved, so good time support is a must. I've been reading a lot about the time support in VTK, but the only thorough description I can find is an old(?) wiki post from when it was first discussed: <a href="http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/VTK/Time_Support" target="_blank">http://www.vtk.org/Wiki/VTK/Time_Support</a> .<br>
<br>One paragraph in this article is particularly interesting:<br><br>"Playback of an animation means varying <i>time</i>, instead of varying <i>timesteps</i>.
By sampling time at regular intervals, animations can play-back at the
correct rate, even if the timesteps in a dataset don't represent
regular intervals. When dealing with multiple datasets, the correct
data can automatically be displayed, as long as the dataset timesteps
share a common reference (if they don't, simple offset and scale
transformations are trivial to implement and use). In the case of a
single dataset, matching the animation sample points to the timesteps
in the dataset can provide backwards-compatible behavior."<br clear="all"><br>Now to my questions:<br><br>* Is time support indeed this general in VTK?<br><br>* Does it work seamlessly with the rest of VTK?<br><br>* Is there a performance penalty when working with timesteps? If so, how large is it?<br>
<div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Thank you for your attention,<br><br>Johannes Töger<br>
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