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The Visualization Toolkit (VTK) is an open source, freely available software system for 3D computer graphics, modeling, image processing, volume rendering, scientific visualization and information visualization. VTK also includes ancillary support for 3D interaction widgets, two and three-dimensional annotation, and parallel computing. At its core VTK  is implemented as a C++ toolkit, requiring users to build applications by combining various objects into an application. The system also supports automated wrapping of the C++ core into Python, Java and Tcl, so that VTK applications may also be written using these interpreted programming languages.

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VTK was originally written as part of a textbook The Visualization Toolkit An Object-Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics. Will Schroeder, Ken Martin, and Bill Lorensen, three graphics and visualization researchers, wrote the book and companion software on their own time beginning in December 1993, and with legal permission from their then employer GE Corporate R&D. After the core of VTK was written, users and developers around the world began to improve and apply the system to real-world problems. To support what was becoming a large, active and world-wide VTK community Ken and Will, along with Lisa Avila, Charles Law and Bill Hoffman left GE Research to found Kitware, Inc. in 1998. Since that time, hundreds of additional developers have created what is now the premier visualization system in the world today.

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Note: Use of the VTK Logo is not an implied endoresement by Kitware, VTK, or the developers of VTK of your tookit or project.

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Average Number of Monthly Web Visits
(based on Google Analytics)		 24,200
Monthly Downloads from Servers 18,793
   

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