SimITK: rapid ITK prototyping using the Simulink visual programming environment

A. W. L. Dickinson; P. Mousavi; D. G. Gobbi; P. Abolmaesumi

doi:10.1117/12.878254

1 March 2011 SimITK: rapid ITK prototyping using the Simulink visual programming environment

A. W. L. Dickinson, P. Mousavi, D. G. Gobbi, P. Abolmaesumi

Proceedings Volume 7964, Medical Imaging 2011: Visualization, Image-Guided Procedures, and Modeling; 796438 (2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.878254
Event: SPIE Medical Imaging, 2011, Lake Buena Vista (Orlando), Florida, United States

Abstract

The Insight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit (ITK) is a long-established, software package used for image analysis, visualization, and image-guided surgery applications. This package is a collection of C++ libraries, that can pose usability problems for users without C++ programming experience. To bridge the gap between the programming complexities and the required learning curve of ITK, we present a higher-level visual programming environment that represents ITK methods and classes by wrapping them into "blocks" within MATLAB's visual programming environment, Simulink. These blocks can be connected to form workflows: visual schematics that closely represent the structure of a C++ program. Due to the heavily C++ templated nature of ITK, direct interaction between Simulink and ITK requires an intermediary to convert their respective datatypes and allow intercommunication. We have developed a "Virtual Block" that serves as an intermediate wrapper around the ITK class and is responsible for resolving the templated datatypes used by ITK to native types used by Simulink. Presently, the wrapping procedure for SimITK is semi-automatic in that it requires XML descriptions of the ITK classes as a starting point, as this data is used to create all other necessary integration files. The generation of all source code and object code from the XML is done automatically by a CMake build script that yields Simulink blocks as the final result. An example 3D segmentation workflow using cranial-CT data as well as a 3D MR-to-CT registration workflow are presented as a proof-of-concept.

Citation Download Citation

A. W. L. Dickinson, P. Mousavi, D. G. Gobbi, and P. Abolmaesumi "SimITK: rapid ITK prototyping using the Simulink visual programming environment", Proc. SPIE 7964, Medical Imaging 2011: Visualization, Image-Guided Procedures, and Modeling, 796438 (1 March 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.878254

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available