Curved reformations using the Medical Imaging Interaction Toolkit (MITK)

Modern systems for visualization, image guided procedures and display allow not only one type of visualization, but a variety of different visualization options. Only a combination of two-dimensional image display and three-dimensional rendering provides enough information for many tasks. Multiplanar orthogonal and oblique reformations of image data are standard features of medical imaging software packages today. Additionally, curved reformations are useful. For example, diagnosis of stenotic vessels can be supported by curved reformations along the centerline of the vessel, showing the complete vessel in one two-dimensional view. In this paper, we present how the open-source Medical Imaging Interaction Toolkit (MITK, www.mitk.org), which is based on the Insight Toolkit (ITK) and the Visualization Toolkit (VTK), can be used to rapidly build interactive systems that provide curved reformations. MITK supports curved reformations not only for images, but also for other data types (e.g., surfaces). Besides visualizations of curved reformations, which can be combined and are kept consistent with other two- and three-dimensional views of the data, interactions on such non-planar manifolds are supported. The developer only has to define the curved manifold, everything else is dealt with by the toolkit. We demonstrate these capabilities by means of a tool for mapping of coronary vessel trees.