Here are some links to books that you may find useful for understanding and developing with the Visualization Toolkit. The first two are specific to VTK - the textbook which describes the underlying algorithms and principals of visualization, and the VTK User's Guide with installation instructions, examples, and programming tips. The remaining books are of general interest to the visualization researcher.

The Visualization Toolkit An Object-Oriented Approach To 3D Graphics, 4th Edition
Will Schroeder, Ken Martin, Bill Lorensen
528 pages, printed in full color
includes CD-ROM with software/data
updated for VTK version 5
ISBN 1-930934-19-X
Kitware, Inc. publishers

Buy the Visualization Toolkit textbook
$89 includes free shipping in the US

The Visualization Toolkit User's Guide
Kitware, Inc.
384 pages, printed in full color
includes CD-ROM with software/data
ISBN 1-930934-18-1
Kitware, Inc. publishers.

Buy the VTK User's Guide
$79 includes free shipping in the US
Mastering CMake
Ken Martin and Bill Hoffman
250 pages, printed in black/white
updated for CMake version 2
ISBN 1-930934-16-5
Kitware, Inc. publishers

Buy the CMake book
$52 includes free shipping in the US
The ITK Software Guide
Luis Ibanez, Will Schroeder, Lydia Ng, Josh Cates
787 pages, printed in black/white
updated for ITK version 2.4
ISBN 1-930934-15-7
Kitware, Inc. publishers

Buy the ITK Software Guide
$79 includes free shipping in the US
Object-Oriented Modelling and Design. This book has Bill Lorensen as an author, and its principles were used to design VTK.
Foley, van Dam, Feiner, Hughes Computer Graphics Principles and Practice. This book is considered by some to be the bible of computer graphics, although a little big and intimidating.
Alan Watt Computer Graphics Principles and Practice. Another nice, more managable computer graphics book.
Steve Upstill The Renderman Companion. Renderman is a powerful rendering system that can be used with VTK to create very nice images.
Brent B. Welch Practical Programming in Tcl & Tk. Useful if you develop VTK applications using Tcl/Tk.
Mark Lutz Programming Python. Learn more about Python, helpful if you are developing Python applications in VTK
Open Sources. Learn how "Open Source" software like VTK works as a business model.
Scott Meyers Effective C++. An excellent book on advanced C++ programming techniques.

The following are some technical documents that can be helpful for understanding VTK data structures and algorithms:

  • This document describes basic VTK File Formats used to import data. The document is extracted from the VTK User’s Guide.
  • Please see this document if you are interested in generating parametric surfaces. The document is authored by Andrew Maclean (revised 10 September 2006).
  • Ordered triangulations are used by VTK to generate compatible triangulations in some algorithms. Learn more about  ordered triangulations.
  • VTK has extensive support for distributed parallel computing.
  • While VTK supports a wide variety of cell types, it is possible to add new interpolation functions (i.e. cell types) using VTK’s generic adaptors and filters.

VTK Links of Interest: