Development
Overview
Vespa is a free software suite composed of four magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) applications called Simulation, Pulse, DataSim and Analysis. These powerful tools are for magnetic resonance (MR) spectral simulation, MR RF pulse design, simulated MRS data creation and spectral processing and analysis of MR data.
Vespa's DataSim application is new; the other three applications in the suite are rewritten versions of three existing MRS software tools IDL-GAVA/Gamma, IDL-Vespa, and MatPulse. Vespa enhances and extends their capabilities and provides a free, integrated, open source, and open development platform.
Vespa's applications run separately, but communicate via a shared database of objects and results. One example of inter-application sharing is that Simulation can make use of an RF pulse designed in Pulse to create a more realistic MR simulation. The output of Simulation can in turn be used as improved prior information in Analysis for a more robust spectral fit of experimentally generated data. Simulation output can also be used in DataSim to create user defined MRS data sets with varying amounts of added noise that can be used to test algorithms in Analysis.