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OpenIGTLinkIO Development
Key Investigators
- Simon Drouin (Montreal Neurological Institute, Canada)
- Andras Lasso (Queen’s University, Canada)
- Csaba Pinter (Queen’s University, Canada)
- Adam Rankin (Robarts Research Institute, Canada)
- Mark Asselin (Queen’s University, Canada)
- Étienne Léger (Concordia University)
- Longquan Chen (Brigham and Women’s Hospital)
- Tamas Ungi (Perk Lab)
Project Description
Objective
- Plus Toolkit provides access to numerous hardware devices (imaging devices, tracking devices, navigations systems, sensors, etc.) and makes it available through OpenIGTLink protocol
- This group has created a common library, OpenIGTLinkIO that simplifies the integration of Plus (and OpenIGTLink-compatible devices or software) into different programs and :
- Ensure software interoperability between Slicer, MITK, CustusX, Ibis Neuronav and potentially other imaging platforms.
- Share software maintenance workload
- Make it easy to share new features
- Add specific features for tracked ultrasound and and augmented reality in surgical navigation
Approach and Plan
- Improve support for video compression in OpenIGTLink and OpenIGTLinkIO
- Add support for the Attracsys tracking system to the Plus Toolkit
- Add more options to remotely control US machine parameters
- Implement a Plus server launcher class that can be used in Plus server launcher, Slicer, Ibis, MITK and CustusX.
- Discuss incentives/oportunities that could convince US machine vendors to open up more components of their machines for real-time acquisition and control for research.
Progress and Next Steps
- Support for compressed video in OpenIGTLinkIO has been improved to better handle keyframes through smarter buffering (Longquan).
- The code for launching a Plus Server has been extracted from PlusServerLauncher to a standalone class that is used in Ibis Neuronav. Next step: add the class to OpenIGTLinkIO. The code can then be used by Slicer and other applications to automatically launch a Plus server on the local machine, monitor its execution and parse the output.
- A recently developed tablet application for surgical AR (Described in this article ) has been adapted to easily connect to any OpenIGTLinkIO-powered application. The application has been tested to transmit video to Slicer and IbisNeuronav.
- The tablet application has also been setup to produce augmented reality images on Ibis Neuronav (see video) using tracking data from a Plus Server connected to a OptiTrack tracking system.
- TODO: summarize the conclusions of the discussion about opening up US machines’ SDK.
Illustrations
