Plus Toolkit

Features

Highlights


Position data acquisition from various devices, including electromagnetic trackers (Ascension, NDI Aurora) and optical trackers (OptiTrack, NDI Polaris and Certus, Claron MicronTracker)
Data acquisition from commercial surgical navigation systems: Medtronic StealthStation navigation system (receives tracking data and planning volume), BrainLab navigation system (receives tracking data, planning volume, and landmarks; through OpenIGTLink)
Data acquisition from various positioning devices: prostate LDR brachytherapy steppers (CIVCO, CMS Accuseed, Burdette Medical Systems), daVinci surgical systems (experimental), Kuka LightWeight robot (through OpenIGTLink)

Image acquisition from ultrasound systems:  through direct digital interface (for Ultrasonix, BK, Interson, Telemed, Philips ultrasound scanners) and through framegrabbers
Ultrasound image simulation: B-mode images are generated from multiple moving objects (such as bones, soft tissue, tools), each defined by a simple surface mesh.
Image acquisition from various other devices including surgical microscopes, video endoscopes, webcams, USB cameras, Siemens MRI scanners (receives slices in real-time, through OpenIGTLink)

Data acquisition from orientation sensors and controllers: PhidgetSpatial, CHRobotics, Microchip inertial sensors; 3Dconnexion 3D mouse
Data acquisition from ThorLabs compact CCD spectrometers for real-time navigated optical spectroscopy applications.
Data acquisition and control using Arduino devices (through serial interface)

Fully automatic spatial and temporal ultrasound probe calibration: with convenient GUI application, tutorial, 3D printable calibration phantom. Fully automatic temporal calibration of multiple tracking systems.
Streaming of live tracked image data to 3D Slicer / SlicerIGT and other OpenIGTLink-compatible applications.
Ultrasound volume reconstruction: performance-optimized, multi-threaded, with advanced hole filling, skin surface contact detection.

Support of 8/16-bit grayscale, 24-bit RGB images in 2D+t and 3D+t image streams. Ultrasound RF to B-mode conversion: brightness conversion and scan conversion, for linear and curvilinear transducers.
Catalog of freely usable,
3D-printable models of tools and tracking fixtures 		 


More features

  • Matlab interface for real-time sending and receiving of transforms or reading/writing of transforms and image data to/from files (implemented as readily usable Matlab scripts, no need for compiling MEX files, etc.)
  • Automatic testing infrastructure, diagnostic tools, simulators for development and testing without having access to hardware devices
  • Fully supported on Windows 32 and 64 bit with VS2008, limited testing is performed with VS2010, VS2012, and with gcc on Linux, occasionally tested on Mac OS X
  • Many research groups and companies use the toolkit worldwide
  • Completely free, no restriction BSD license (for everything, including source code, documentation, CAD models, etc.)