Medical Imaging Interaction Toolkit

Volume visualization with MITK | © dkfz.de

The Medical Imaging Interaction Toolkit (MITK) is a free software library with the objective of simplifying the development of interactive medical imaging processing programs. The ability to combine and reuse interactive components is increased, duplicate developments are avoided and thus with simultaneously shorter development times a better software quality is achieved. Since 2002, the MITK has been the basis for all developments of the Department of Medical and Biological Informatics and is continuously undergoing further development. MITK is based on the likewise free toolkits ITK and VTK, whereby it is not only the libraries as such that are reused, but also the design principles realized therein. It is the objective not to discover something that already exists, but merely to supplement that functionality which is required for interactive medical image processing systems and which lies outside of the task definition of the basic toolkit. Additional information as well as source code and sample applications for displaying images, segmentation and registration can be found at www.mitk.org .

The concepts of the MITK presently include:

Interactive segmentation in MITK | © dkfz.de

• Simple preparation of consistent, multiple views onto the same data

• Semantic organization of the available data in a common data repository

• Creation and alteration of data by means of generic interaction patterns

• Realization of complex interactions by means of hierarchical status definitions - Undo/Redo
functionality

• Uniform handling of different input devices, including various
tracking systems for navigation applications

• Uniform geometric descriptions for the location of objects in space and the
areas to be depicted

• Customizable properties of data nodes for the modification of visualizations and for
semantic purposes

• Uniform description as well as visualization and interaction of time-resolved
three-dimensional data records (3D+t)

Support at the application level

Rigid registration in MITK | © dkfz.de

At the application level, task-specific application modules can be integrated into an extendable basic application and combined with existing modules (plug-in principle). The basic application offers:

• DICOM import

• Volume visualization, MPR, MIP

• Measurement functions

• Segmentation and registration procedures

• Image processing operators

• Diffusion imaging

Selected Publications

• [P04-05] Wolf I, Hastenteufel M, Wegner I, Vetter M, Greil G, Küttner A, Claussen CD, Meinzer HP. Curved reformations using the medical imaging interaction toolkit (MITK). In Galloway RL, Cleary KR (eds). Proc. SPIE Medical Imaging 2005: Visualization, Image-Guided Procedures, and Display, Vol. 5744, 831-838, 2005
• [J19-05] Wolf I, Vetter M, Wegner I, Bottger T, Nolden M, Schobinger M, Hastenteufel M, Kunert T, Meinzer HP. The Medical Imaging Interaction Toolkit. Med Image Anal. 2005 Dec;9(6):594-604.
• [P17-04] Wolf I, Vetter M, Wegner I, Nolden M, Böttger T, Hastenteufel M, Schöbinger M, Kunert T, Meinzer HP. The medical imaging interaction toolkit (MITK): a toolkit facilitating the creation of interactive software by extending VTK and ITK. In: Galloway RL (Hrsg), SPIE Medical Imaging 2004: Visualization, Image-Guided Procedures, and Display, Vol. 5367, SPIE The International Society for Optical Engineering, Bellingham, 16-27, 2004.
• [P02-04] Wegner I, Vetter M, Wolf I, Meinzer HP. Ein generisches Interaktionskonzept mit Undo für die medizinische Bildverarbeitung. In Tolxdorff T, Braun J, Handels H, Horsch A, Meinzer HP (eds). Bildverarbeitung für die Medizin 2004. Berlin: Springer (2004) 150-154 (ISBN: 3-540-21059-8).

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