%0 Journal Article
%A Klemm, Martin
%A Kirchner, Thomas
%A Gröhl, Janek
%A Cheray, Dominique
%A Nolden, Marco
%A Seitel, Alexander
%A Hoppe, Harald
%A Maier-Hein, Lena
%A Franz, Alfred
%T MITK-OpenIGTLink for combining open-source toolkits in real-time computer-assisted interventions.
%J International journal of computer assisted radiology and surgery
%V 12
%N 3
%@ 1861-6429
%C Berlin
%I Springer
%M DKFZ-2017-01249
%P 351 - 361
%D 2017
%X Due to rapid developments in the research areas of medical imaging, medical image processing and robotics, computer-assisted interventions (CAI) are becoming an integral part of modern patient care. From a software engineering point of view, these systems are highly complex and research can benefit greatly from reusing software components. This is supported by a number of open-source toolkits for medical imaging and CAI such as the medical imaging interaction toolkit (MITK), the public software library for ultrasound imaging research (PLUS) and 3D Slicer. An independent inter-toolkit communication such as the open image-guided therapy link (OpenIGTLink) can be used to combine the advantages of these toolkits and enable an easier realization of a clinical CAI workflow.MITK-OpenIGTLink is presented as a network interface within MITK that allows easy to use, asynchronous two-way messaging between MITK and clinical devices or other toolkits. Performance and interoperability tests with MITK-OpenIGTLink were carried out considering the whole CAI workflow from data acquisition over processing to visualization.We present how MITK-OpenIGTLink can be applied in different usage scenarios. In performance tests, tracking data were transmitted with a frame rate of up to 1000 Hz and a latency of 2.81 ms. Transmission of images with typical ultrasound (US) and greyscale high-definition (HD) resolutions of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] is possible at up to 512 and 128 Hz, respectively.With the integration of OpenIGTLink into MITK, this protocol is now supported by all established open-source toolkits in the field. This eases interoperability between MITK and toolkits such as PLUS or 3D Slicer and facilitates cross-toolkit research collaborations. MITK and its submodule MITK-OpenIGTLink are provided open source under a BSD-style licence ( http://mitk.org ).
%F PUB:(DE-HGF)16
%9 Journal Article
%$ pmid:27687984
%R 10.1007/s11548-016-1488-y
%U https://inrepo02.dkfz.de/record/124370