[Insight-developers] Feedback on possible major contribution on vascular extraction and analysis

[Karthik Krishnan]

Ivan:

This is wonderful.

I'll let Stephen give you the run down; you should definitely take a look at
the ongoing effort TubeTk. The wiki page should get you started.

    http://public.kitware.com/Wiki/TubeTK

The toolkit is based heavily on ITK and provides interfaces to Slicer and is
licensed under a BSD like (apache) license.

--
karthik

On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 3:53 PM, Ivan Macia <imacia at vicomtech.org> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> Recently, I have been given the opportunity of taking again my Phd Thesis
> work (I am currently full-time R&D engineer) that will focus on vascular
> analysis. I am investigating the current and future techniques on vascular
> extraction, analysis and modelling from medical images and their
> applications. As a part of it, I am developing a module/library that hope
> will help me in my research that will consist of the following:
>
> - An open model for vascular structures via generic programming. This
> includes a network, graph-like structure that can be traversed, an open
> model for branches, centerlines and sections and corresponding operations
> such as quantification of vessel attributes, etc.
> - A generic algorithm for vessel tracking, with interchangeable components
> such as metrics (vesselness or medialness functions), section estimators,
> etc.
> - Many more things in the future... :)
>
> Philosophy:
> - The module is (or tries to be) fully ITK compatible, is based on generic
> programming techniques etc. in order to provide flexibility in the vascular
> model definition and interchangeability of components. This allows to
> replace a component such as the vesselness metric without rewriting the
> whole algorithm, for example in order to benchmark different techniques.
> - It makes use of previous exisiting components as much as possible, it
> defines DataObjects and Filters (VesselDataObject,
> ImageToVesselDataObjectFilter...) and reuses algorithms such as current
> vesselness algorithms in ITK, ITK optimizers etc.
> - It does not pretend to overlap other toolkits such as VMTK, which I think
> is more oriented to geometric modelling, more than symbolic modelling.
> Furthermore, it could be compatible with it.
> - It is fully ITK oriented and focuses on the extraction and modelling of
> vascular structures from medical images.
> - It may serve as a model that can later be used in VMTK, VTK for
> visualization, Slicer, whatever.
>
> The work is ongoing, the initial vascular model is defined and the vascular
> tracking has just started to work with promising results. Further
> functionalities and components will be added in the near future. There exist
> about 50 classes right now, although some of them are not fully functional.
>
> I don't want to be too pretentious and I would like my work to be used as
> much as possible and this is why I would like to share it with the community
> in the near future. I still need to develop several things and experiment
> with them (and hopefully publish something interesting for the Thesis work),
> but thought that may be useful to comment it in this forum, so others can
> give their opinion and even add their own requirements or design
> considerations at an early stage.
>
> Regarding ITK I see the following possibilities:
> - If the ITK committee aproves it it may incorporated (at least partly) in
> the future as part of the toolkit itself following for example this process
> (http://www.itk.org/Wiki/ITK_Oversight_Proposal_Process)
> - It could be a separate toolkit such as Orfeo Toolbox.
>
> Please, feel free to comment or discuss with me any aspect of this in
> public or private.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> Iván Macía
>
>
>
>
>
>
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