XIP™ – the eXtensible

Imaging Platform

A rapid application development and

deployment platform

Lawrence Tarbox, Ph.D.

September, 2010

What is XIP™

The eXtensible Imaging Platform (XIP™) is an image analysis and visualization tool designed for use in caBIG®.

XIP is an open source environment for rapidly developing medical imaging applications from an extensible set of modular elements and libraries.

XIP may be used by commercial vendors and researchers alike to prototype or develop new applications.

Imaging applications developed by research groups may be accessible within the clinical operating environment, using a new DICOM Plug-in interface first implemented in XIP.

XIP serves as a reference implementation of the DICOM WG-23 Application Hosting interfaces.

Major Parts of XIP™

XIP Libraries™

modular components for building applications

The XIP Builder™ Developer Tool a visual/graphical programming tool that helps

accelerate XIP™ application development

DICOM Application Hosting APIs a method for deploying applications portably

The XIP Host™

a caGrid-enabled DICOM Hosting System for running Hosted Applications, such as those built with XIP™

The XIP Libraries™

• Based on the Open Inventor™ Libraries

• Provides an object-oriented approach to Open GL graphics

• Includes both processing pipeline and graphical scene graph paradigms

• The basis for the VRML 3D rendering standard used on the Internet

• Serializable

• Easy to extend

• Extended with nodes and engines exclusive to XIP™

• Provides a core rendering framework, including access to GPU processing

• Includes 2D markup/overlay, measurements, plots, and other functions, designed to simplify the building of medical imaging applications

• Incorporates the powerful ITK and VTK libraries

• Lowers the learning curve for using ITK and VTK

• Bridges between the ITK, VTK, XIP™, and Open Inventor™ functions

• Hundreds of example scene graphs

• An Application Developer may use the XIP BuilderAn Application Developer may use the XIP Builder™™ tool from Siemens tool from Siemens Corporate Research to create the app’s scene graph and processing Corporate Research to create the app’s scene graph and processing pipelines from XIP Librariespipelines from XIP Libraries™™

The XIP™ Builder ToolAn Application Developer may

use the XIP Builder™ tool

from Siemens Corporate

Research to create the app’s

scene graph and processing pipelines from XIP Libraries™

Test and Debug Logic

• The XIP Builder™ tool can be used to test and debug the scene graphThe XIP Builder™

tool can be used to test and debug the

scene graph

12/5/2008 6Lawrence Tarbox, Ph.D.

Add GUI and Housekeeping Logic

• Application Developer controls the scene graph by creating a GUI Application Developer controls the scene graph by creating a GUI program (e.g. via Java Swing)program (e.g. via Java Swing)

12/5/2008Lawrence Tarbox, Ph.D. 7

Application Developer

controls the scene graph by creating a GUI program (e.g.

via Java Swing)

• Provides the infrastructure in which XIP™ or DICOM Hosted Applications run• Authenticates user using caGrid and IHE security• Manages installation, launching, and termination of XIP™ Applications• Provides data and services to XIP™ Applications• Accepts status information and results back from XIP™ Applications• Deals with auditing and controls access to services and data

• Isolates the XIP™ application from the nature of databases, archives, networks, and possibly image data formats

• Manages access to caGrid, IHE, and DICOM networks, objects, and services• Creates Abstract Models from input data

• Handles workflow issues• Worklist support

• Supports any application that follows the DICOM WG-23 Application Hosting Interface Standard

The XIP Host™

Unix, Mac, PC Internet ServerCommercial Vendor

#2

……Commercial Vendor #1

XIP developed XIP developed

ApplicationApplication

Standard API

Relationship between XIP™ and DICOM Application Hosting

DICOM Application Hosting addresses clinical integration and vendor inter-operability by defining standardized “plugs” and “sockets” (APIs) between Hosted Applications (e.g. XIP™ Applications) and Hosting Systems

XIP™ provides an open-architecture, open-source, integrated environment for rapid application development that offersDICOM Application Hosting APIs

DICOM Application HostingGeneral Principle

• Separate the provision of infrastructure from the application• Infrastructure providers (Hosting Systems) concentrate

on the movement and storage of data and results, and on workflow management.

• Application providers (Hosted Applications) concentrate on the processing and analysis of that data, providing results back to the infrastructure.

• Minimize the ‘reinvention of the wheel’• Common infrastructure elements, such as networking,

access control, etc., need not be recreated for each new Hosted Application.

Stakeholders in DICOM Application Hosting

• Users• Want one workstation that supports any needed functionality• Want to pick and choose any application to run on that workstation

regardless of who created that application• IT Administrators

• Tired of changing infrastructure to accommodate new workstations simply to add functionality

• Application Developers• Do not have time to customize applications for each of the

workstations available in the market from dozens of vendors• Workstation Vendors

• Want to expand their list of offered applications beyond those in the base workstation without incurring extra development effort

DICOM Application Hosting Summary

DICOM Application Hosting introduces a new paradigm for writing and distributing medical imaging applications

The DICOM Application Hosting interfaces allow those applications to run on any workstation that supports the standard interfaces XIP™ includes the DICOM Application Hosting APIs for

building both hosts and applications XIP™ includes a reference host implementation and

sample applications Other implementations of DICOM Application Hosting

now exist Products are beginning to appear

More Info

• Additional information about XIP™ as well as downloadable software is available at http://www.OpenXIP.org

• DICOM Supplement 118 “Application Hosting” can be downloaded from http://dicom.nema.org

• Please feel free to e-mail me at TarboxL@mir.wustl.edu if you have questions

• If you want a demo at the 2010 caBIG® Annual Meeting, call me at +1.314.681-2752