2011 Winter Project Week:The Vascular Modeling Toolkit in 3D Slicer

• 

  Projects List

• 

  VMTK in 3D Slicer

• 

  Enhancing vasculature structures

• 

  Level-Set segmentation

• 

  Computation of Centerlines

• 

  Network extraction of vessel trees

• 

  Branchsplitting

• 

  The new parameter widget for VMTKVesselness4

Key Investigators

• UPenn: Daniel Haehn, Kilian Pohl
• Rutgers: M. Gokhan Uzunbas
• Orobix, Italy: Luca Antiga
• SPL: Steve Pieper, Ron Kikinis

Objective

The Vascular Modeling Toolkit (VMTK) is a collection of libraries and tools for 3D reconstruction, geometric analysis, mesh generation and surface data analysis for image-based modeling of blood vessels.

Several 3D Slicer extensions already exist and provide VMTK functionality in Slicer3.

Approach, Plan

We want to investigate how to include the VMTK in 3D Slicer functionality in the upcoming Slicer4 application. This should include several enhancements to the existing user interfaces.

Progress

Project Week Update: Unfortunately, we did not have as much time as we liked to spend on this project. Nevertheless, we created a QT widget to optimize the selection of user-defined parameters for vessel enhancement. The new widget will be part of the upcoming first VMTK module for Slicer4 called VMTKVesselness4.

We plan to investigate if the integration of the new widget in CTK makes sense.

Delivery Mechanism

This work will be delivered to the NA-MIC Kit as a (please select the appropriate options by noting YES against them below)

1. ITK Module
2. Slicer Module
   1. Built-in
   2. Extension -- commandline
   3. Extension -- loadable [X]
3. Other (Please specify)

References

• Antiga L, Piccinelli M, Botti L, Ene-Iordache B, Remuzzi A and Steinman DA. An image-based modeling framework for patient-specific computational hemodynamics. Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing, 46: 1097-1112, Nov 2008.
• D. Hähn. Integration of the vascular modeling toolkit in 3d slicer. SPL, 04 2009. Available online at http://www.spl.harvard.edu/publications/item/view/1728.
• D. Hähn. Centerline Extraction of Coronary Arteries in 3D Slicer using VMTK based Tools. Master's Thesis. Department of Medical Informatics, University of Heidelberg, Germany. Feb 2010.
• Piccinelli M, Veneziani A, Steinman DA, Remuzzi A, Antiga L (2009) A framework for geometric analysis of vascular structures: applications to cerebral aneurysms. IEEE Trans Med Imaging. In press.