Please test MCX/MCX-CL/MMC v2024.2 release-candidate packages

[Qianqian Fang]

hi everyone,

Since the discovery of the severe bug (#212), it has been my intent to make a new release (v2024.2) asap to roll out the fixes to all users. I have been working on this over the last few weeks. Additional updates made to mcxcl and mmc as well.

Key features added in v2024.2 compared to v2023 include

== MCX ==

•     support user-defined photon launch angle distribution (#13)
•     can simulate multiple sources in a single session (#163)
•     support per-voxel mua/mus/g/n float format (#203)
•     critical bug fix for double-multiplication of pattern launched weight in `pattern`/`pattern3d` sources (#212)
  

== MCX-CL ==

•     user-defined scattering phase function (fangq/mcx#129) and
•     user-defined photon launch angle distribution (fangq/mcx#13)

== MMC ==

•     support saving photon trajectories (-D S or cfg.debuglevel='S')
•     allow to use a single JSON input file to store mesh node, element and iMMC ROI data, along with other simulation settings
•     compute element face-neighbors (facenb) and volumes (evol) in C code, avoid needing preprocessing
•     support built-in benchmarks, use --bench to list and --bench name to run
•     accept pattern data in the JSON input file

I have create all release-candidate packages under the nightly-build folder, all tagged with v2024.2 in the file name (to distinguish from nightly build). I would like to invite everyone try installing those files on your system and see if you see any problem.

https://mcx.space/nightly/

if everything looks ok, I plan to announce this new release in the next few days.

Qianqian