[Stir-announce] STIR 5.2.0 release

[Thielemans, K. <k.t...@uc...>]

Dear all

STIR 5.2.0 is out! You can find a summary on Release v5.2.0 * UCL/STIR (github.com)<https://github.com/UCL/STIR/releases/tag/rel_5.2.0> as well as Summary of changes in STIR release 5.2 (sourceforge.net)<https://stir.sourceforge.net/documentation/release_5.2.htm>. Some more important points:

  *   ECAT8 normalisation (used for the Siemens mMR) code now takes the 4th component axial effects into account (and writes far fewer warnings)
  *   Some changes in scatter estimation, enabling using fewer iterations but also some fixes for BlocksOnCylindrical data. Also fix a problem in the example files for the mMR (related to tail-fitting)
  *   Bug fix for ray-tracing matrix for BlocksOnCylindrical data
  *   Some speed-up in set_up of parallelproj projectors
  *   Extra capability for "shapes and ROI to use "labels"
  *   New utility SPECT_dicom_to_interfile (still somewhat limited in what it understands from the DICOM headers)
  *   New stir_timings utility
  *   Updated a lot of the "overview"-type documentation (supplied as .tex/.pdf), which was very much out-of-date

Please note that there are now a fair number of old features deprecated. We will also require C++-14 in our next release (currently STIR requires only C++-11). Do check the release notes.

Thanks to all contributors and testers, but especially Daniel Deidda and Markus Jehl.

The conda release has been updated as well. (Note that at the moment, the "dev" branch is now behind the "main" conda release) .

SIRF 3.5.0 (just released) supports the STIR 5.2.0 new functionality already, but still works with STIR 5.0.0. SIRF 3.6.0 will be distributed with STIR 5.2

I'd like to thank our various contributors again. Even small contributions make a big difference!

Next step is the merge of the TOF Pull Request<https://github.com/UCL/STIR/pull/304> to master. This will hopefully happen before our STIR User's and Developer's meeting<https://stir.sourceforge.net/2023UsersMeeting/> on 10 November. Note that remote attendance without conference registration will be possible.

Enjoy

Kris Thielemans
Professor in Medical Imaging Physics at University College London,
Institute of Nuclear Medicine,
UCL Hospital Tower 5, 235 Euston Road, London NW1 2BU,  UK