VTK has an information visualization framework, has a suite of 3D interaction widgets, supports parallel processing, and integrates with various databases and GUI toolkits such as Qt and Tk.

The system also supports automated wrapping of the C++ core into Python, Java and Tcl, so that VTK applications may also be written using these programming languages.

[3] VTK was initially created in 1993 as companion software to the book The Visualization Toolkit: An Object-Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics.

After the core of VTK was written, users and developers around the world began to improve and apply the system to real-world problems.

[3] With the founding of Kitware, the VTK community grew rapidly, and toolkit usage expanded into academic, research and commercial applications.