Release 1.6 Doc Updates

[ericspod]

Part of #8874

Description

This updates documentation and other components for the 1.6.0 release.

Types of changes

• Non-breaking change (fix or new feature that would not break existing functionality).
• Breaking change (fix or new feature that would cause existing functionality to change).
• New tests added to cover the changes.
• Integration tests passed locally by running ./runtests.sh -f -u --net --coverage.
• Quick tests passed locally by running ./runtests.sh --quick --unittests --disttests.
• In-line docstrings updated.
• Documentation updated, tested make html command in the docs/ folder.

[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: 6049de8b-6430-47ff-9bfb-60b92e6a86f4

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 7e1f3cc and f22919e.

📒 Files selected for processing (1)

• docs/source/whatsnew_1_6.md

✅ Files skipped from review due to trivial changes (1)

• docs/source/whatsnew_1_6.md

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

This PR prepares MONAI for the 1.6.0 release. It adds a new versioned changelog entry populated with "Added", "Fixed", "Changed" subsections and PR references; updates the citation metadata to version 1.6.0; introduces a comprehensive whatsnew_1_6.md document covering new losses, metrics, config enhancements, and serialization changes; and registers the new release notes in the documentation index. In parallel, it consolidates all documentation links across README, CONTRIBUTING, and Sphinx config from docs.monai.io to monai.readthedocs.io. A minor formatting cleanup removes emojis from the prior 1.5.2 release notes header.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 1 (Trivial) | ⏱️ ~3 minutes

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title 'Release 1.6 Doc Updates' accurately reflects the main change—preparing documentation and components for the 1.6.0 release.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description follows the template structure with issue reference, clear summary, and types of changes checked appropriately.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests

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[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 2

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against current code. Fix only still-valid issues, skip the
rest with a brief reason, keep changes minimal, and validate.

Inline comments:
In `@docs/source/whatsnew_1_6.md`:
- Line 17: Update the sentence in the release notes where it currently reads
"which is not out of support" to instead read "which is now out of support" so
the phrasing in the MONAI what's new text (the sentence mentioning Python 3.10
and 3.9) is grammatically correct; edit the string in
docs/source/whatsnew_1_6.md that contains that sentence accordingly.
- Line 27: Fix the typo in the release note sentence that mentions re-enabling
pickle: replace "equivaent" with "equivalent" in the sentence that references
the environment variable MONAI_ALLOW_PICKLE so it reads "...or the equivalent
true value." Ensure the corrected word appears in the same paragraph where
"MONAI_ALLOW_PICKLE" and "pickle" are discussed.

🪄 Autofix (Beta)

Fix all unresolved CodeRabbit comments on this PR:

• Push a commit to this branch (recommended)
• Create a new PR with the fixes

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ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: 09afe289-b05b-4763-b7eb-0e1e6a0c7248

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 013bda0 and 7e1f3cc.

📒 Files selected for processing (8)

• CHANGELOG.md
• CITATION.cff
• CONTRIBUTING.md
• README.md
• docs/source/index.rst
• docs/source/whatsnew.rst
• docs/source/whatsnew_1_5_2.md
• docs/source/whatsnew_1_6.md