Another challenge in our design is to provide a procedural interface to the algorithms,

while still providing a object oriented interface for those that prefer it. Therefore the
interface design needs to be flexible so that it can support multiple usage styles.

There are many aspects of ITK that we would like to retain. The algorithms still needed
to be at the high performance standard that ITK currently has as a compiled C++
library. And we still would like support for the flexible multi-threaded infrastructure
when the filtering algorithms are executed. The survey participants placed a high
priority on the large number of pixel types available in ITK. Therefore we must support
this wide variety of pixel types including color images and vector component images.

The initial mission of ITK included providing a platform for algorithm development,
SimpleITK goals focus on providing usable algorithms. So the building block that ITK
provides for algorithm development such an image iterator, adaptor, neighborhood
algorithms and other utilities and interfaces are not designed to be included in the
SimpleITK interface. This limitation should not exclude SimpleITK from being a
platform for new algorithm development. For example new methods can be developed
that are a composite of other algorithms.

Lastly, while ITK is an biomedical segmentation and registration library, it explicitly

does not contain any visualization. That is a user can not view an image with ITK alone.
Viewing an image requires an external program or library. However for SimpleITK to be
part of an interactive environment convenient visualization of intermediate images is
required.