NCRR Meeting Notes
Monday, October 9, 2000, 1:00 pm

Rob MacLeod


Progress Reports

BioPSE

License agreement:
in order to use sourceforge to release BioPSE we need a license agreement and we are still waiting for the final version of this. Greg will have one more meeting in which he hopes we can have all resolved.
Ports:
Michael is working on a new port structure that will allow ports to handle fields and differentiate between specific sub-type based on a string that each module will read. For more details on this,
see www.cvrti.utah.edu/~macleod/ncrr/technical/biopsenotes.html
Field I/O:
Michael and Chris are working on the readers and writers for field class data. Alexi is working on the interface to the file browser.

Directory structure:
The discussion about file structure goes on without resolution. The present structure is still:
Current directory structure
SCICore PSECore PSECommon SCIRun DaveW Yarden ...
- low level libraries - mid level data flow functions - most functioning modules - a few modules - Dave's version of modules Yarden's modules etc.,
The plans and problems with this include (from Dave W):

If you have suggestions of comment, please send them to Dave. We may have to sign in blood that the layout will not change again for months or years so comment now or live with the result quietly.

Module review:
No module reviews at this meeting.

FAQ

All projects of any size can benefit from a frequently asked questions list, an ``FAQ'' and here is a proposal to develop one.

  1. I (Rob) will try and write down candidate questions in meetings or from the email traffic on the SCIRun developers' list. I will be the judge of which questions make good candidates for the FAQ (but please suggest questions as you come across them)

  2. Dave and I assign to someone in the group, ideally someone who attended the meeting and/or is on the mailing list; we will send the question by email for an answer.
    1. This answerer cannot be the person who posed the question, nor who answered it at the meeting; this way people are not punished for asking good questions, or answering them.

    2. Being absent from meetings does not protect anyone from getting a question assigned.

    3. If the assigned answerer cannot answer the question (if he/she was at the meeting, the answer should be clear, right?) then the task will be to do the research and get the answer by whatever means necessary.

  3. The answer to the question and the question should come back to Rob and then will get to the web page.

The goals of this exercise are to a) encourage people to come with questions and engage in discussion, b) gather relevant knowledge to disseminate to our people, and c) develop an FAQ that we can use internally as well as for the developers we will have off site.

So, unless I hear loud screams of pain, you can expect to see messages in your email and we will be checking at each week's meeting if any questions are still without answers.

Building your own module

Marty gave a talk about the steps in creating a module with special emphasis on the process of describing that module. The place to look for all the information he presented is
www.sci.utah.edu/scirun_docs/doc/ReferenceGuide/specProcedure.html
and there are links there to follow for the various pieces.

A general note is that all SCIRun documentation is in www.sci.utah.edu/scirun_docs/doc so visit there often to see the latest.

Conferences and NCRR Seminars

Please provide Rob with links to any conferences of interest to the NCRR group-especially those that include medical applications and might be suitable for us to attend.

Upcoming conferences:
Conferences coming up that are of special relevance to the group include:
NCRR Seminars
none in the pipeline at the moment.


Documentation

New SpecML:
Ted has finished and the doc group approved a new SpecML document format to make it simpler and easier to use. Marty is working on a document that describes using the new spec template.
Doc Link:
The new link for all the BioPSE docs is www.sci.utah.edu/scirun_docs/doc.
Doc styles:
Erik has made a document describing how to use his style sheets to make consistent documentation. To try this out, go to
www.sci.utah.edu/scirun_docs/doc/ReferenceGuide/doc_markup.html

Research

Dave:
reported on a new result of a source localization based on measured data from evoked potentials. It was not clear what the stimulus was, and there is still a need to provide some form of validation, but we are not geared up and equipped to run these sorts of simulations fairly easily (or at least Dave is).

Web site

Data archive:
Erik has put some of this together and needs to get some data from Rob.
BioPSE logo:
Erik showed Rob a new logo and we will review this and bring it to the group soon.

Miscellaneous

no news


Agenda for for future meetings

Specific agenda items to anticipate for the next meeting include:

  1. Update on NCRR seminar speakers and scheduling their talks
  2. Schedule for NCRR meetings
  3. Event manager for BioPSE
  4. Installation of BioPSE

Most of the next meetings will be organized around the brief research reports from specific individuals and then discussion of modules. Each person in the group will volunteered for one more more modules and will lead the discussion, which will center on the design and capabilities of the module. For details on the overall layout of modules and a list of BioPSE modules we have envisioned so far, go to
www.cvrti.utah.edu/~macleod/ncrr/technical/modules.shtml

About this document ...

NCRR Meeting Notes
Monday, October 9, 2000, 1:00 pm

This document was generated using the LaTeX2HTML translator Version 99.2beta6 (1.42)

Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, Nikos Drakos, Computer Based Learning Unit, University of Leeds.
Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999, Ross Moore, Mathematics Department, Macquarie University, Sydney.

The command line arguments were:
latex2html -split 3 -no_white -link 3 -no_navigation -nomath -html_version 3.2,math notes-9oct00

The translation was initiated by Rob MacLeod on 2000-10-09

Rob MacLeod 2000-10-09