The future of MINC

MINC is a complex, powerful image file format for medical images that includes a standard API to ensure that all files read/written conform to the MINC standard. MINC is also a collection of software tools for qualitative and quantitative medical image analysis that has been developed over the past 20 years. Unfortunately, MINC is difficult to install and the learning curve is steep for new users.

Our goal is to guarantee a future for MINC (and the MINC tools) in the face of competing file formats and software packages by simplifying the installation and use of the MINC libraries and tools.

This book/page will serve as a location to discuss difference aspects of MINC that need to be changed or improved and will also serve to record the history of the decision process of these changes (circa 2011).

These changes were initiated by a discussion on the GEEKS list, and then in telephone conference held Feb 23, 2011 were we discussed these notes. The goals of this tconf were to identify some of the issues involved and the majors steps needed to move forward. The outcome of this call was the creation of a list of actions that we needed to address to start the process of improving MINC.

Some of the actions require discussion amongst the interested parties:

DevelopmentShift - Discussion of where to shift the development environment