OpenIGTLink/Matlab

<< OpenIGTLink

About the project

The objective of this project is to provide OpenIGTLink interface for Matlab / Octave to support research and development in image guided therapy (IGT). Matlab and Octave are widely used for prototyping image and signal processing algorithms. They also offer many powerful function sets to handle matrix and coordinate data, which is useful to test and analyze coordinate data exported from tracking and robotic devices. The OpenIGTLink interface for Matlab / Octave allows importing and exporting several types of data that can be handled in the OpenIGTLink protocol in a Matlab / Octave environment. It provides a rapid prototyping environment, which many researchers and engineers are already familiar with.

This project is a generalization of Slicer Matlab Pipeline project in the 2007 NA-MIC Project Week.

How does it work?

The OpenIGTLink Matlab interface is implemented as a set of MEX Files, which are C/C++ source codes called from Matlab. Those MEX files simply receive data from Matlab, connect to the OpenIGTLink receiver, serialize the data in an appropriate format using the OpenIGTLink Library, and send it to the receiver.

The usage of the interface is quite simple. The following example Matlab code is sending trancking data to the receiver waiting at port #18944 in the localhost.

%%% affine transform matrix
M = [1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0;
     0.0,-1.0, 0.0, 0.0;
     0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0;
     0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0];

IMGDATA.Type = 'TRANSFORM';
IMGDATA.Name = 'MatlabTrans';
IMGDATA.Trans = M;

sd = igtlopen('localhost', 18944);
r = igtlsend(sd, IMGDATA);
igtlclose(sd);

For tracking data transfer:

%%% read image data
fid = fopen('igtlTestImage1.raw', 'r');
I = fread(fid, [256 256], 'uint8')';
fclose(fid);

%%% affine transform matrix
M = [1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0;
     0.0,-1.0, 0.0, 0.0;
     0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0;
     0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0];

IMGDATA.Type = 'IMAGE';
IMGDATA.Name = 'MatlabImage';
IMGDATA.Image = I;
IMGDATA.Trans = M;

%%% send the image data through OpenIGTLink connection
sd = igtlopen('localhost', 18944);
r = igtlsend(sd, IMGDATA);
igtlclose(sd);

How to Get Started

Install the OpenIGTLink Library

The instruction can be found in OpenIGTLink/Library

Get the Matlab OpenIGTLink interface source code

The OpenIGTLink/Matlab interface is in the initial stage of development. The source code is available from NA-MIC SandBox repository at

 http://svn.na-mic.org/NAMICSandBox/trunk/BRPTools/MatlabIGTL

Build MEX files

You need to have a MEX compiler or octave to the build MEX binaries. To build the binaries, you may need to edit the Makefile.

First substitute the path to the OpenIGTLink Library source and binary directories installed in your system:

 ### OpenIGTLink Library
 IGTLSRC= /projects/igtdev/tokuda/igtl/OpenIGTLink
 IGTLBLD= /projects/igtdev/tokuda/igtl/OpenIGTLink-build

If you use Maltab, specify the full path to the MEX compiler. You don't need to have any options to the MEX compiler.

 MEX    = /local/os-exact/pkg/Matlab71-64/bin/mex
 MEXOPT = 

If you use Octave, specify the full path to the mkoctfile program and "--mex" option.

 MEX    = /Applications/Octave.app/Contents/Resources/bin/mkoctfile
 MEXOPT = --mex

Now it's ready to build your MEX file. Run make. If the MEX files are successfully built, you could find:

igtlclose.mex<arc-name>
igtlopen.mex<arc-name>
igtlsend.mex<arc-name>

Note that <arc-name> is the architecture name of your system.

Contact

We are not providing a support for this software, but questions and requests are always welcome. If you have any, please contact Junichi Tokuda at Brigham and Women's Hospital.