# ITK or SimpleITK in Python?

**URL:** <https://discourse.itk.org/t/itk-or-simpleitk-in-python/2926>\
**Category:** Beginner Questions\
**Tags:** python\
**Created:** [April 10, 2020, 9:25pm UTC](https://discourse.itk.org/t/itk-or-simpleitk-in-python/2926 "2020-04-10T21:25:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

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**Author:** ![matt.mccormick](https://discourse.itk.org/user_avatar/discourse.itk.org/matt.mccormick/32/7_2.png) [@matt.mccormick](https://discourse.itk.org/u/matt.mccormick)\
**Post date:** [April 13, 2020, 7:20pm UTC](https://discourse.itk.org/t/itk-or-simpleitk-in-python/2926/3 "2020-04-13T19:20:25Z")

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As @zivy mentioned, both SimpleITK and ITK support commercial development; they are distributed under an [Apache 2.0](https://github.com/InsightSoftwareConsortium/ITK/blob/master/LICENSE).

> [@mridev](#):
>
> Also, I was not able to read transformation file (\*.tfm) that I generated by ITK registratio

ITK Python wrapping supports writing and reading transformation files, but the interface has not been convenient in the past; ITK 5.1 will provide [Pythonic `itk.transformread` and `itk.transformwrite`](https://github.com/InsightSoftwareConsortium/ITK/issues/1249) functions similar to the `itk.imread`, `itk.imwrite`, `itk.meshread`, `itk.meshwrite` functions for images and meshes.

> [@mridev](#):
>
> ITK for processing 4D data types (dynamic MRI, for example)

ITK has a [Video](https://itk.org/Doxygen/html/group__Group-Video.html) framework for processing timeseries in real time. Wrapping has not been added, but it could be added.

ITK [5.1 supports working with xarray DataArray’s](https://discourse.itk.org/t/itk-5-1-release-candidate-2-available-for-testing/2803/4). These are essentially NumPy arrays with associated metadata. xarray includes support for a dimension, which could have a label `t`, whose coordinates are NumPy `datetime64` values. This serves [many times series processing needs](https://xarray.pydata.org/en/stable/time-series.html) well.

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