567.20Lawrence Tarbox¹, Jaroslaw Krych¹, Gianluca Paladini², Thomas Moeller², John Pearson², Kirk Smith¹, Fred Prior¹

¹Dept. of Radiology Washington University in St. Louis, MO, USA; ²Siemens Corporate Research, Princeton, NJ, USA . Funded by caBIG-IMG-99-01-31052006

XIP: the eXtensible Imaging Platform

Abstract

To encourage the use of imaging in clinical trials the caBIG In Vivo Imaging Workspace

is developing the open-source eXtensible Imaging Platform™ (XIP). XIP™ supports

rapid development of ‘plug-in’ applications for image analysis and visualization. These

applications utilize a host-system-independent interface being standardized by DICOM

WG-23, and could, therefore, be launched and controlled by any system that supports

that interface. Host independence facilitates translational research across multiple

centers by allowing the same application to be deployed into a wide variety of settings,

both research-oriented and clinically-oriented. XIP applications can be customized for

specific clinical trials to assure uniformity in analysis across centers. The XIP package

includes a reference XIP Host™ that can utilize DICOM services as well as caGRID

data and analytic services to support XIP applications. The XIP Libraries™ are based

on Open Inventor™, with extensions to support medical imaging applications. These

extensions include both custom-built objects as well as automatically-generated

wrapper objects for commonly used toolkits such as ITK and VTK. A developer can use

the XIP Builder™ tool with the XIP Libraries to rapidly create and debug medical

imaging applications.

What is ?

• XIP is an open source environment for rapidly developing medical imaging

applications from an extensible set of modular elements

• Researchers can easily develop and evaluate new approaches to medical

imaging problems, and use them in a translational research setting

• caGRID makes it possible to develop an XIP architecture that allows users

to choose between remotely hosted grid-based components and data

sources as well as locally available components and sources

• Components may include analytic services, e.g. CAD algorithms,

algorithms for quantifying changes in consecutive imaging studies,

3-D visualization pipeline etc.

• Available data sources include NCIA, caGRID data services,

DICOM data repositories, local databases, etc.

Applications

• Applications are formed from Interconnected Open

Inventor ® engines, nodes, and manipulators from

XIP Libraries

• Engines enable the creation of processing

pipelines and animation

• Nodes support the concept of scene graphs,

which are hierarchical structures of objects

describing what needs to be visualized in

2D/3D, fed by the engines

• Manipulators handle input devices,

measurements and coordinate transforms in

response to user interaction via a simple

event model

• Focused on the processing logic, not the

infrastructure or data format

• Skinnable GUI engine for different look-and-feel on

different platforms

Current Status

• XIP is a full participant in caGRID and

has the ability to query and retrieve from

the National Cancer Image Archive

(NCIA).

• The Electronic Radiology Laboratory

has established an independent

NCIA instance using open source

Virtual Machine technologies and is

actively working to extend NCIA.

• The combination of NCIA and XIP

provides a powerful platform for

multi-center clinical trials

• XIP incorporates the caBIG Annotation

and Image Markup (AIM) model.

• AIM provides tools for capturing and

sharing text and graphics associated

with an image

• Using caGRID AIM data structures

can be shared and stored in caGRID

data services

REFERENCES

1. Prior et al. Journal of Digital Imaging, Vol. 20, Supp 1; Nov. 2007

2. Pearson et al. Imaging Tools in Cancer Research and Prevention; Wiley, 2008, ISBN 978-0-470-11880-1

3. Rubin et al. 2008 AAAI Spring Symposium Series, Semantic Scientific Knowledge Integration, Stanford

University, 2008

• Provides the infrastructure in which XIP or DICOM WG-23

Applications run

• Authenticates user

• Manages installation, launching, and termination of

XIP Applications

• Provides data and services to XIP Applications

• Accepts status information and results back from

XIP Applications

• Deals with auditing and controls access to services

and data

• Isolates the XIP application from the nature of databases,

archives, networks, and possibly image data formats

• Manages caGRID interactions and security

• Manages access to DICOM networks, objects, and

services

• Maps images and associated meta-data from

various sources between their native form and a

common form useable by the XIP application

• Provides General Purpose Worklist support.

Host

WG-23 addresses clinical integration and vendor inter-operability by defining standardized “plugs” and “sockets” (APIs)

caBIG XIP addresses an open-architecture, integrated development environment for rapid prototyping & collaboration based onWG 23 APIs.

Unix, Mac, PC Internet ServerCommercial Vendor #2

…

Commercial Vendor #1

Clinical Prototype & Collaboration

Any XIP developed

Application

or

WG-23 Application

Standard API

The same application can run on any XIP or WG-23 Host

is the reference implementation of the DICOM WG-23 application hosting interface

Integration : AIM and NCIA

XIP Application Builder

XIP Application

(Can be replaced with any DICOM WG23-compatible Host)

XIP Host Adapter

XIP

LIB

ITK

VTK . .

.

XIP LibrariesHost Independent

WG23

XIP Host

WG23 WG23

Web-based

Application

Medical Imaging

Workstation

Distribute

DICOM, HL7, and other

services per IHE Profiles

caGRID Services via

Imaging Middleware

XIP Class Library

Auto Conversion Tool

Host-Specific Plug-in Libraries

WG23

Stand-alone

Application

XIP Builder

• The initial phase of XIP development is complete. The source code, reference implementations, the XIP Builder Tool, the XIP Libraries, and all documentation are available from: http://www.openxip.org and

http://gforge.nci.nih.gov/projects/xip/

• Other caBIG projects such as AVT are based on XIP and new projects outside of the caBIG community are adopting XIP

• caBIG is finalizing requirements for XIP extensions that will provide additional applications and hosting options and full integration with the NCIA storage system