Welcome to the ITK-SNAP Homepage!

This page is organized as a list of frequently asked questions.

What is ITK-SNAP?

SNAP is a software application used to segment structures in 3D medical images. It provides semi-automatic segmentation using active contour methods, as well as manual delineation and image navigation. In addition to these core functions, SNAP provides a number of supporting utilities. Some of the core advantages of SNAP include

• Linked cursor for seamless 3D navigation
• Manual segmentation in three orthogonal planes at once
• Simplified user interface for selecting parameters for the active contours method
• Support for many different 3D image formats
• 3D cut-plane tool for fast post-processing of segmentation results
• Extensive tutorial

How Much Does it Cost?

Nothing. Thanks to the investments made by the PICSL lab at the University of Pennsylvania, the National Linrary of Medicine, UNC Chapel Hill and ETH Zurich, SNAP is free to use for any purpose, academic or commercial. The source code for SNAP is freely available and can be copied and modified.

However, since SNAP is free, there's no technical support number to call. The continued development of SNAP is done on a volunteer basis. Please keep that in mind when you use SNAP.

What Can SNAP do for Me?

If you are a clinical researcher in neurology, radiology, psychiatry, surgery, or any other field that uses medical images, you may be able to use SNAP to enhance your productivity. Unlike many current image processing tools, SNAP was designed to be easy to learn and use for people without a computer science or engineering background.

If you are in the business of developing software applications that work with medical images, you may be able to incorporate parts of SNAP into your software. You can also use SNAP as a model of a user friendly application developed on top of ITK.

What Can I do for SNAP?

You can help make SNAP better in two ways. First, if you use SNAP and report its successes and failures, you will help idenitify bugs and missing features. Use the 'Bugs' link at the top of this page to report bugs. Second, if you are a software developer, you can contribute to SNAP by writing code. SNAP is an open source application, and a part of the Insight Toolkit (ITK). To become an ITK developer, follow the instructions at http://www.itk.org/HTML/About.htm

Who Made SNAP?

To see the list of contributors to SNAP, please click here. The most recent version of SNAP was developed by Cognitica Corporation under a contract from the National Library of Medicine.

Is this the Official Page for SNAP?

If you want to get, use and comment about SNAP, you have found the right page. This page is maintained by Paul Yushkevich, who led the development of the ITK version of SNAP. However, this page does not represent the views or opinions of the National Library of Medicine, the Insight Consortium or any other party that has contributed to SNAP development.