Advanced Normalization Tools

摘要 该应用程序寻求支持，以开发下一代高级标准化工具(ANT)生态系统，这是一个开放源代码库，跨越多个软件包和编程语言，包含全球范围内由大量研究人员使用的最高性能算法。核心软件库ANTS建立在著名的NIH资助的洞察工具包(ITK)的基础上，并对其做出了贡献，ITK历史上一直是开源算法和软件创新的重要资源。在长达十年的发展过程中，ANTS使数百名学术界和工业界的科学家能够满足现代定量成像的需求，特别是生物医学成像中的问题--广泛的应用和出版的研究文献采样了从小动物到人类的生物体研究以及目标器官系统，如呼吸、心血管和神经系统。今天，ANTS是一个免费提供的、跨平台的多通道图像处理工具包，继续在该领域设定标准。然而，尽管它成功地满足了广大研究人员的现实世界需求，但成像的使用迅速增长，以及解决越来越复杂的图像配准问题的相关需求，需要对ANT进行动态更新，以满足生物医学研究界当前和正在出现的需求。这一重大更新是有史以来第一次申请为ANTS开发提供专项资金支持，将包括该项目的四个具体目标：1)显著扩大能够受益于基于TS的解决方案的多种模式注册任务的范围；2)更新和扩大该工具对超大型数据集和可扩展计算平台的支持；3)提供参考注册协议，并在研究人员驱动的研究中验证其可靠性；以及4)加强对用户社区的支持和外联。这些发展将确保蚂蚁在面对计算和成像技术的重大进步时的长期生存能力，并使更广泛的研究受众能够在其科学产出中利用蚂蚁。

Summary This application seeks support to develop the next generation of the Advanced Normalization Tools (ANTs) ecosystem, an open-source library spanning multiple software packages and programming languages that houses top-performing algorithms used worldwide by a large community of researchers. The core software library, ANTs, is built upon and contributes to the well-known NIH-funded Insight Toolkit (ITK), which has historically been a significant resource of open-source algorithmic and software innovation. Over the course of its decade-long development, ANTs has enabled hundreds of academic and industrial scientists to meet modern quantitative imaging needs with particular focus on issues in biomedical imaging-a broad range of applications and published research literature sample the study of organisms from small animals to humans as well as target organ systems such as respiratory, cardiovascular, and nervous. Today, ANTs is a freely available, cross-platform toolkit for multiple modality image processing which continues to set the standard in the field. However, despite its success in meeting the real-world needs of a broad community of investigators, the rapidly growing use of imaging, and the associated need to solve ever more complex image registration problems, require a dynamic update of ANTs in order to meet current and emerging needs of the biomedical research community. This major update, representing the first ever application for dedicated funding support of ANTs development, will comprise of the four specific aims of this project: 1) to significantly broaden the range of multiple modality registration tasks able to benefit from AN Ts-based solutions; 2) to modernize and expand the tool's support of very large datasets and scalable computing platforms; 3) to provide reference registration protocols and validate their reliability in investigator-driven research studies; and 4) to enhance support and outreach to the user community. These developments will ensure the long-term viability of ANTs in the face of significant advancements in computing and imaging technologies, as well as enable an even broader research audience to leverage ANTs in their scientific output.