New release: elastix version 5.3.0!

[N-Dekker]

Dear all,

I'm very pleased to announce that we have just released elastix 5.3.0, at https://github.com/SuperElastix/elastix/releases !

Including the following improvements:

• Added a new metric component: IMPACT (Image Metric with Pretrained model-Agnostic Comparison for Transmodality registration), by Valentin Boussot (@vboussot) et al. (pull request ENH: Add IMPACT Similarity Metric to Elastix #1311)
  • Reference: "IMPACT : A Generic Semantic Loss for Multimodal Image Registration", Valentin Boussot, Cédric Hémon, Jean-Claude Nunes, Jason Dowling, Simon Rouzé, Caroline Lafond, Anaïs Barateau, Jean-Louis Dillenseger, arXiv:2503.24121 – Under review
  • In order to use this metric, download LibTorch and enable CMake option USE_ImpactMetric. More information: https://github.com/vboussot/ImpactLoss
• Supported the TOML format for registration parameter files and transform parameter files (pull request Support the TOML file format for input parameter files #1288, ENH: Support OutputTransformParameterFileFormat parameter for TOML #1289)
  • As alternative to the "legacy" elastix specific text file format
• Supported fixed width notation for the elastix parameter ResultImagePixelType (pull request ENH: Fixed width types ("int8", "float64", etc) for ResultImagePixelType #1335)
  • Supported parameter values: "int8", "int16", "int32", "int64", "uint8", "uint16", "uint32", "uint64", "float32", "float64"
• Supported registering a 3D slice on a 3D volume (pull request ENH: MultiResolutionGaussianSmoothingPyramidImageFilter support 3D slice #1388)
  • The default pyramid ("FixedSmoothingImagePyramid", "MovingSmoothingImagePyramid") now accepts 3D images that have a thickness of 1 pixel
  • Inspired by forum.image.sc topic Elastix questions related to 2D => 3D registration, started by Christian Tischer (@tischi)
• Improved transformix command-line option "-def" for VTK files (pull request Transform VTK files in accordance with their format and floating point precision #1253)
  • When the input file is a binary VTK file, the output file is now also a binary VTK file (rather than an ASCII file)
  • When the input file is a VTK file of 32-bit floating points, the output file is now also a VTK file of 32-bit floating points (rather than 64-bit floating points)
  • Inspired by pull request ENH: Support for binary point file (.bin) reading and writing #943 by @ChristophKirst
• Library enhancements:
  • Added SetFixedPoints and SetMovingPoints member functions to ElastixRegistrationMethod (pull request Add SetFixedPoints and SetMovingPoints to ElastixRegistrationMethod, for point-to-point EuclideanDistanceMetric  #1239)
    • Supported specifying the input points for "CorrespondingPointsEuclideanDistanceMetric"
  • Made random number generation used by samplers deterministic, even when running registrations multithreaded (pull request ENH: Make random numbers multithreading registrations deterministic #1323)
    • Aims to address Deterministic multithreading usage of itkMersenneTwisterRandomVariateGenerator, raised by @michalmeszaroswork

For all the details, please check https://github.com/SuperElastix/elastix/releases

Kind regards, Niels

[N-Dekker]

Last week we released an update: elastix 5.3.1! Again, please check https://github.com/SuperElastix/elastix/releases ! Most important improvements of this elastix 5.3.1:

• For Windows users: With this release, the executables (elastix.exe and transformix.exe) fully support Unicode (utf-8) file path names for registration parameter files and transform parameter files (pull request ENH: use utf-8 via manifest on Windows #1401). A big thank you to Bernhard Fröhler (@codeling)!
• The IMPACT metric component that was introduced with elastix 5.3.0 is now loaded as a plugin, by means of "lazy loading", allowing anyone to use it without having to rebuild elastix (pull request ENH: Lazy loading for optional components (IMPACT) #1396). Another big thank you to Valentin Boussot (@vboussot)!
• For users of Linux and MacOS: The executables (elastix and transformix) now have a relative path to the directory of the third party library that we are using added to its RPATH (pull request ENH: Add relative path to lib directory to RPATH on Linux and MacOS #1404). So now it is no longer necessary for users to set their LD_LIBRARY_PATH. The extra versioned ".1" library files were removed (pull request Remove VERSION and SOVERSION target properties, replace "elx" prefix with "elx-", for library files  #1416).
• A small performance improvement was achieved for the metrics (specifically "DistancePreservingRigidityPenalty" and "TransformRigidityPenalty") and two transforms ("BSplineTransformWithDiffusion" "MultiBSplineTransformWithNormal") (pull request Avoid calling ImageConstIterator::GetIndex() iteratively, in transforms and metrics #1410).
• Improved error handling for ParameterObject: it now throws an exception when the specified index or parameter name is not there (pull request ENH: Let ParameterObject throw an exception when index is out of range #1420 and ENH: ParameterObject.GetParameter throw when parameter name is not there #1422).