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.)