Integration of the OpenIGTLink Network Protocol for Image-Guided Therapy with the Medical Platform MeVisLab

TL;DR

This paper details the integration of the open, extensible OpenIGTLink protocol into the MeVisLab platform, enabling seamless communication with hardware devices and other software like Slicer for image-guided therapy applications.

Contribution

The authors developed a C++ module integrating OpenIGTLink into MeVisLab, facilitating hardware and software interoperability in medical imaging and therapy.

Findings

Successful communication with hardware devices supporting OpenIGTLink

Compatibility with Slicer for image visualization and analysis

Tested with real tracking systems and online tracker clients

Abstract

We present the integration of the OpenIGTLink network protocol for image-guided therapy (IGT) with the medical prototyping platform MeVisLab. OpenIGTLink is a new, open, simple and extensible network communication protocol for IGT. The protocol provides a standardized mechanism to connect hardware and software by the transfer of coordinate transforms, images, and status messages. MeVisLab is a framework for the development of image processing algorithms and visualization and interaction methods, with a focus on medical imaging. The integration of OpenIGTLink into MeVisLab has been realized by developing a software module using the C++ programming language. As a result, researchers using MeVisLab can interface their software to hardware devices that already support the OpenIGTLink protocol, such as the NDI Aurora magnetic tracking system. In addition, the OpenIGTLink module can also be used to communicate directly with Slicer, a free, open source software package for visualization and image analysis. The integration has been tested with tracker clients available online and a real tracking system.