[Stir-devel] STIR release 6.3.0 is out

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

Dear all

I'm very happy to announce STIR 6.3.0. This version is 100% backwards compatible with STIR 6.2, aside from three important bug fixes, which will change results.

This is a release with many new features, as listed below. Highlights are

  *   the new Gibbs penalty hierarchy with CUDA and OpenMP support (and much easier addition of new potential functions) (Matteo Neel Colombo, Univ of Milano-Bicocca),
  *   new 2D analytic reconstruction algorithms (including two that allow quantitative reconstruction of SPECT) (Dimitra Kyriakopoulou, UCL),
  *   better Python support including algebraic operations and faster conversion to NumPy arrays (Kris Thielemans, UCL),
  *   continuous memory storage for arrays (allowing zero-copy access to image/projection data in SIRF Python, but not yet in STIR Python)
(Kris Thielemans, UCL),
  *   faster scatter estimation for blocks on cylindrical scanners (Markus Jehl, Positrigo),
  *   reduced memory usage for iterative reconstructions, avoiding hitting the current limitation of 2^31 elements in ProjDataInMemory (Kris Thielemans, UCL),
  *   Python code for adapting e7tools output for Siemens Vision 600 to STIR (Nicole Jurjew, UCL)

But there are many other changes from other contributors as well. Of course, there is also the usual code-cleanup and some improvements to the documentation. Overall overview and release management was by Kris Thielemans (UCL) with help from Daniel Deidda (NPL).

Full details are in the  Release notes for STIR 6.3<https://stir.sourceforge.net/documentation/release_6.3.htm>. Download instructions and others links are at https://stir.sourceforge.net/download/.

Many thanks to all STIR contributors for making this release so exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing some of you at our (hybrid) STIR User's and Developer's meeting<https://stir.sourceforge.net/2025UsersMeeting/> next Thursday (see details on the website) to discuss progress and future of STIR!
Kris Thielemans
Professor in Medical Imaging Physics at University College London,
Institute of Nuclear Medicine, UCL