[vtkusers] OPEN ACCESS: Rapid Development of Medical Imaging Tools with Open-Source Libraries

[Luis Ibanez]

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2039808

Rapid Development of Medical Imaging Tools with Open-Source Libraries
Jesus J. Caban, Alark Joshi, and Paul Nagy


[Authors took the "Open Access" option in a Springer publication]
[See http://www.springer-sbm.com/index.php?id=13036]


[This paper comments on ITK, VTK, KWWidgets and IGSTK]


Abstract
Rapid prototyping is an important element in researching new imaging
analysis techniques and developing custom medical applications. In the
last ten years, the open source community and the number of open source
libraries and freely available frameworks for biomedical research have
grown significantly. What they offer are now considered standards in
medical image analysis, computer-aided diagnosis, and medical
visualization. A cursory review of the peer-reviewed literature in
imaging informatics (indeed, in almost any information
technology-dependent scientific discipline) indicates the current
reliance on open source libraries to accelerate development and
validation of processes and techniques. In this survey paper, we review
and compare a few of the most successful open source libraries and
frameworks for medical application development. Our dual intentions are
to provide evidence that these approaches already constitute a vital and
essential part of medical image analysis, diagnosis, and visualization
and to motivate the reader to use open source libraries and software for
rapid prototyping of medical applications and tools.


This work was supported by Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research
Center (TATRC)

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     Luis