The SimpleITK image analysis library is available in multiple programming languages including C++, Python, R,[1] Java, C#, Lua, Ruby and Tcl.

Developed at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as an open resource, its primary goal is to make the algorithms available in the ITK library accessible to the broadest range of scientists whose work includes image analysis, irrespective of their software development skills.

[2] As a consequence, the SimpleITK interface exposes only the most commonly modified algorithmic settings of the ITK components.

A secondary goal of the library is to promote reproducible image analysis workflows[3] by using the SimpleITK library in conjunction with modern tools for reproducible computational workflows available in the Python (Jupyter notebooks) and R (knitr package ) programming languages.

Since 2019, SimpleITK development is primarily carried out under the Office of Cyber Infrastructure and Computational Biology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.