Matlab liked my idea

Matlab is one of the most frequently used programming languages for science and engineering.

Though I can't verify it, it seems that Matlab has incorporated one of my ideas into its standard distribution.

Back in 2006, I was working on reconstruction algorithms for computed tomography (CT). Here is a video I made that demonstrates CT reconstruction. It takes the radon transform (at the bottom) and constructs the image slice (top).

I found Matlab's code slow, so I replaced the time-consuming part of their code with a faster version that I wrote. It was faster because I precompiled it using mex... nerd detail. I submitted my code to their File Exchange service so other people could benefit from it.

Anyhooo, in preparing my lecture on CT reconstruction today, I was suprised to see that Matlab's code was now faster than mine. WTF?!

I looked at their code, and saw that they had replaced the exact same part with mex code, just like I did.

Here is what a snippet of their original (slow) code looked like.

I replace it with the following code that calls the program I wrote (LinearBackproject).

And now this is what their new code looks like.

They even used my 0/1 flag (the last argument) to indicate to the iradonmex subroutine whether to use nearest-neighbour or linear interpolation.

Even if Matlab did use my code directly, I have no financial recourse. But it feels nice to be appreciated.

My brains, spread all around the world

Every now and then, I get an e-mail from someone asking if they can use my MRI data for their paper or project. In case you've never seen "My Brain" page, it has a link to download a 3D stack of slices of my head. One of the 129 slices is shown on the right.

A couple years ago, I was approached by the creators of ImageJ, a free image-processing application offered by the National Institute of Health in the U.S. They asked if I would agree to allow them to use my MRI data as a standard sample dataset. OF COURSE! So now anyone that has ImageJ can get my MRI slices by simply choosing "Open samples..." from the File menu. They can also see a volume rendering from that MRI stack. ... the scanner adds at least 10 pounds.