Application Hosting A Standardized API for Launching and Communicating with 'Plug-in' Applications

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Application HostingA Standardized API for
Launching and Communicating with 'Plug-in'
Applications

• DICOM Working Group 23
• Lawrence Tarbox, Ph.D., Chair
• Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology
• Washington University in St. Louis School of
  Medicine

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WG-23 Goal

• Portable applications that plug into any host
  that implements the standardized socket

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Goals

• A Standardized API that is
• Language independent
• Platform independent
• IP independent
• Extensible
• Secure

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Suggested Staging

• Stage one Access to DICOM Datasets and Results
  Recording
• Stage Two Access to Non-Interactive Application
  Services (e.g. print, archive)
• Stage Three Access to Interactive Application
  Services (e.g. GUI, skins, rendering)
• Stage Four Standard Workflow Descriptions, and
  Interactions Between Hosted Software

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Targets for Stage One

• Basic Launch and Control of a Hosted Application
• Load, Unload, Start, Abort
• Simple Interchange of Data Between a Hosting
  System and Hosted Applications
• Data inputs and outputs described using DICOM
  Semantics
• DICOM messages/objects need not be used directly,
  instead the API could give access to parts of the
  objects
• Manual Configuration

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Highlights Since MI-2006

• Multiple Drafts of Supplement 118
• Initial Reading by WG-6
• Joined forces with the NCI caBIG XIP Project
• Open Source Reference Implementation
• Demonstrations at RSNA
• Targeted Use Cases in Clinical Research
• Accelerated Schedule

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WG23 / XIP Relationship

• WG-23 addresses clinical integration and vendor
  inter-operability by defining standardized
  plugs and sockets (APIs)
• caBIG XIP addresses an open-architecture,
  open-source, integrated environment for rapid
  application development based onWG 23 APIs

XIP developed Application
Standard API

Unix, Mac, PC
Internet Server
Commercial Vendor 2
Commercial Vendor 1
? Prototype Collaboration ?
? Clinical ?
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What is ?

• The eXtensible Imaging Platform is an open
  source environment for rapidly developing medical
  imaging applications from an extensible set of
  modular elements.
• It allows developers to easily develop, evaluate,
  and new approaches to medical imaging problems in
  a translational research setting.
• WG-23 interfaces will be used to gain application
  portability and platform independence.
• The National Cancer Institute (NCI) contracted
  for the development of XIP through its caBIG
  program.

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Who is Contributing to ?

• The caBIG In Vivo Imaging Workspace, Software SIG
  
• Released the XIP RFP
• Provides primary feedback to the XIP development
  team
• Washington University in St. Louis, Electronic
  Radiology Lab
• Main coordinating site
• Will leverage other activities in caBIG, DICOM,
  IHE, clinical trials
• Siemens Corporate Research (SCR)
• Contributing a suite of tools ivRAD that will
  form the basis for XIP
• Experts in moving ideas from prototypes to
  commercial reality
• DICOM WG-23
• Standardizing the interfaces between a hosting
  system (e.g. workstation) and hosted
  post-processing applications (a.k.a. Plug-ins)
• Representation from both vendor and user
  communities
• ITK/VTK community
• Providing image processing and visualization
  libraries with the assistance of Kitware

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What is Included in

• XIP Rapid Application Development Tools and
  Libraries (RAD)
• Development and application build environment
• Extensive and extensible set of libraries for
  imaging and visualization (XIP Libraries)
• Uses the Open Inventor framework
• Includes code generating wizards to create new
  objects and wrap existing libraries
• XIP Workstation (WS)
• A reference implementation of a medical imaging
  workstation developed using XIP RAD and DICOM
  WG-23 APIs
• Includes two key components
• XIP Application a use case specific plug-in
  application integrated via the DICOM WG-23
  Interface
• XIP Host the hosting environment that provides
  XIP Applications with access to services such as
  data stores, remote processing, etc.

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Framework Architecture
Open Inventor Scene Graph / Pipeline Optional
GUI Engine
Open Inventor Nodes, Engines, Manipulators for
Accessing Data Services, Host Services, Remote
Services, etc.
Open Inventor Nodes, Engines, Manipulators for
Rendering, Local Processing, etc.
Glue Logic that Ties Host Dependent Libraries
to the Host Environment
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Open Inventor

• Open Inventor is an object-oriented 3D toolkit
  offering a comprehensive solution to interactive
  graphics programming problems. URL
  http//oss.sgi.com/projects/inventor/
• Its programming model is based on the
  Model/View/Controller design pattern and the
  concept of Pipelines.
• Open Inventor
• is built on top of OpenGL
• defines a standard file format for 3D data
  interchange
• introduces a simple event model for 3D
  interaction
• provides animation objects called Engines
• provides high performance object picking
• is window system and platform independent
• is a cross-platform 3D graphics development
  system
• encourages programmers to create new customized
  objects

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Open Inventor modules in

• C modules represent Engines, Nodes and
  Manipulators
• Engines enable the creation of processing
  pipelines
• Nodes support the concept of scene graphs, which
  are hierarchical structures of objects describing
  what needs to be visualized in 2D/3D
• Manipulators handle input devices, measurements
  and coordinate transforms in response to user
  interaction

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Integrating existing toolkits into

• Automatic Wrapper generation for 2D/3D
  libraries/toolkits such as ITK and VTK User can
  review parsed results and choose to support only
  the desired data types, hide some methods,
  exclude some classes, etc.

• Wrapped ITK functions include Region Growing,
  Neighborhood, Isolated, Confidence, Watershed,
  Thresholding, Edge Detection, Laplacian, Gaussian
• Support for ITK Data Meshes and Vector Fields

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XIP FeaturesModules for DICOM loading and 2D/3D
Display

• XIP modules extend Open Inventor to facilitate
  medical imaging application development
• Database access (read/write)
• DICOM query/retrieve
• Image/Volume types
• Lookup tables
• Transfer function editor
• MPR intersection lines/manipulators
• camera control (pan/zoom/rotate)
• 2D Image display
• ROIs, Annotations, Measurements

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XIP FeaturesModules for Fused Volume Rendering

• Volumes are stored separately and fused at
  rendering time, not as a preprocessing step
• Support for unlimited number of fused large
  volumes
• Each volume has independent control of
• Transformation (rot, trans, scale, shear)
• Color/opacity Transfer function
• Crop box
• Cut-planes
• Rendering mode (VRT, MIP, MinIP, DRR, SSD)
• Voxel Resolution
• Sampling rate
• Performance
• 20 frames/sec during interactivity
• 1 sec for final diagnostic-quality update

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XIP FeaturesModules for Client/Server Remote
Visualization

• ? Visual creation and configuration of
  distributed services
• Thin Client and Smart Client configurations are
  supported
• Support for caGRID remote grid computing services
• XIP modules for DICOM Query, Sorting, remote data
  transmission
• XIP can serialize the entire state to a file,
  thereby facilitating support for client/server
  state management and recovery as well as workflow
  management.

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An Open Platform for WG-23 Application
Development
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Volunteers Solicited

• WG 23 welcomes your input. We would be even
  happier with your assistance in creating this new
  standard or helped in the reference
  implementation.
• Join the mailing list and contribute ideas
• Join us at future meetings
• Participate in NCI caBIG IVI WS SW SIG

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Q A