3D Slicer

To be applied to practical clinical research problems, medical image computing software requires infrastructure including routines to read and write various file formats, manipulate 2D and 3D coordinate systems, and present a consistent user interface paradigm and visualization metaphor. At the same time, research software needs to be flexible to facilitate implementation of new ideas. 3D Slicer is a project that aims to provide a platform for a variety of applications through a community-development model. The resulting system has been used for research in both basic biomedical and clinically applied settings. 3D Slicer is built on a set of powerful and widely used software components (Tcl/Tk, VTK, ITK) to which is added an application layer that makes the system usable by non-programmer end-users. Using this approach, advanced applications including image guided surgery, robotics, brain mapping, and virtual colonoscopy have been implemented as 3D Slicer modules. In this paper we discuss some of the goals of the 3D Slicer project and how the architecture helps support those goals. We also point out some of the practical issues which arise from this approach.

1. INTRODUCTION

Medical image computing applications are complex pieces of software requiring a common set of base functionality as well as the ability to be customized for specific clinical applications. In a research environment, it is often necessary to create prototype environments that allow exploration and refinement of a new algorithm or concept in the context of a complete functional end-user application. The 3D Slicer project [1] (or simply ‘Slicer’) began as way to provide a common research platform with basic functionality and has evolved to support a wide variety of clinical applications. We approached this problem first from the perspective our own laboratory's requirements, but quickly realized that building a larger community of users and developers had the potential to create a more powerful and useful software environment. Following the philosophical model of Open Source software, we have created an infrastructure to manage the project and to encourage community involvement. The resulting software environment has been used as the basis for a number of scientific research efforts which provide the funding for Slicer's ongoing software engineering. There have been over 4000 registered downloads of Slicer not including developer access. The Slicer user's email list contains 166 subscribers; the developer's list 117 subscribers. There are about a dozen active developers with write access to the source code repository and a comparable number of module developers. Figure 1 Sample 3D Slicer display showing intraoperative MRI slices and 3D reconstructions. (Data courtesy Dr. Ion-Florin Talos, Brigham and Women's Hospital)