mrc file format

[Mauro Maiorca]

Hello itk-snap developers,

thank you very much for developing and maintaining itk-snap! I found
itk-snap very useful for electron tomography data (.mrc), we have also
mentioned/cited itk-snap here [1]. Unfortunately it seems to me that
itk-snap doesn't accept mrc data format, thus I use to convert mrc to
MetaIO data (.mhd .raw) and viceversa with a little program I wrote
few years ago. I was thinking it would be a good idea being able to
open mrc files directly from itk-snap. I was wondering whether there
is a plan for including mrc image file format within itk-snap (Open
Image/Save/etc...)?

mrc files are relatively easy to read/write using ITK, something like:
#include "itkMRCImageIO.h"
[...]
typedef itk::ImageFileReader< InputImageType > ReaderType;
ReaderType::Pointer reader = ReaderType::New();
reader->SetImageIO( itk::MRCImageIO::New() );
I reckon the only "issue" might be the pixel spacing, which for the
mrc file format is in Angstroms, and for mhd is usually in mm.

cheers,
Mauro


[1] Maiorca M, Hanssen E, Kazmierczak E, Maco B, Kudryashev M, Hall R,
Quiney H, Tilley L.
Improving the quality of electron tomography image volumes using
pre-reconstruction filtering.
J Struct Biol. 2012 Oct;180(1):132-42. doi:
10.1016/j.jsb.2012.05.019.Epub 2012 Jun 6.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22683346