Motivation for the Vespa Project

History

Vespa was born out the combination of three applications called RFPulse, Simulation and Analysis that were migrated from three previous standalone applications:

* RFPulse <-> [MatPulse](http://www.rrmind.research.va.gov/software/matpulse.asp) - software for RF pulse design written in [Matlab](http://www.mathworks.com/)
* Simulation <-> [GAVA](http://cds.ismrm.org/ismrm-2003/0852.pdf) - software for spectral simulation written in [IDL](http://www.ittvis.com/ProductServices/IDL.aspx) (along with the [GAMMA](https://scion.duhs.duke.edu/vespa/gamma) package written in C++).
* Analysis <-> IDL_Vespa - a package for spectral data processing and analysis written in [IDL](http://www.ittvis.com/ProductServices/IDL.aspx)

Limitations

Some limitations of the previous MRS tools:

  • Non-standard data access
  • Complexities of integrating multiple languages
  • Closed-source software that complicates algorithm extension and free sharing
  • Lack of integration between programs for sharing prior information
  • Incomplete or missing documentation and educational content

Solutions

The new VeSPA project addresses these limitations as follows:

  • Create a free, liberally-licences (BSD) open source MRS toolset
  • Build it on top of the Python language with it's vast library of integration tools
  • Make sure there are straight forward ways for user community expansion
  • Have results saved into a free SQL database (Sqlite) which can be searched and queried
  • Enable the export of pulse sequences, experiments, rfpulses, etc. into an XML format that other Vespa users can then Import into their own local Vespa platforms