Integrating segmentation methods from the Insight Toolkit into a visualization application

The Insight Toolkit (ITK) initiative from the National Library of Medicine has provided a suite of state-of-the-art segmentation and registration algorithms ideally suited to volume visualization and analysis. A volume visualization application that effectively utilizes these algorithms provides many benefits: it allows access to ITK functionality for non-programmers, it creates a vehicle for sharing and comparing segmentation techniques, and it serves as a visual debugger for algorithm developers. This paper describes the integration of image processing functionalities provided by the ITK into VolView, a visualization application for high performance volume rendering. A free version of this visualization application is publicly available and is available in the online version of this paper. The process for developing ITK plugins for VolView according to the publicly available API is described in detail, and an application of ITK VolView plugins to the segmentation of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms (AAAs) is presented. The source code of the ITK plugins is also publicly available and it is included in the online version.