CIBC:Core:Imaging

Thoughts on Medical Imaging (MI) at the CIBC

--Cates 16:22, 19 Oct 2005 (MDT)

There is a growing need for open source software and, more importantly, software standards in the MI community. Several groups (e.g. NAMIC, ISC) are pushing software standards for segmentation, registration, visualization and validation.
Standards for collaborative, open-source software development and testing are a very important part of this effort. CS and non-CS researchers, program managers and students are literally begging for reliable, tested, imaging tools that "just work out-of-the-box".
ITK is gaining acceptance as the standard for segmentation, registration, and certain types of image processing. VTK is already an accepted standard for visualization. Both toolkits have a robust software process and good support within the community.
Other toolkits are extending the functionality of ITK & VTK for more specific imaging and diagnostic medical applications. These toolkits have bought into the open-source process pioneered by NIH and the ITK project.

Many labs are adopting standard software "kits" such as the one promoted by NAMIC.
Non-CS labs use a mix of custom research software and commercially available tools.
CS labs often focus on toolkits, combining fltk, vtk, itk, tcl to produce small, tailored applications. New toolkits are appearing that add application-specific functionality to generic toolkits, e.g. MITK, IGSTK.

Limited support for image data.
Limited support for ITK algorithms.
Limited support for image visualization.
Limited support for image interaction (widgets).
Bottom line: There is no dedicated support for images in SCIRun. Thus far we have relied mostly on existing functionality and retro-fitted it to support image processing.

More fully adopt ITK as our imaging platform. This requires a more serious commitment of resources than may have previously been made?
Participate more actively in the MI open-source movement. We have a significant presence in this community and could more fully exploit our influence.
Bring our software process up to the standards set by the major players in the community. Aspire to gaining the ISC and NAMIC "seal-of-approval", which potentially includes distribution of our code within a standard open-source MI software kit.
Consider re-engineering SCIRun as a collection of lightweight modules to better support agile development and deployment.
Think about alternatives to SCIRun. Are there combinations of other open-source toolkits we can consider that are cheaper and more flexible than SCIRun to use?
A visual programming environment for ITK could become the community open-source standard.
A high quality visualization application (BioImage-style) could become a community open-source standard.
A generic segmentation PowerApp could become a community open-source standard.