Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2004 Sep;17(3):205-16.
doi: 10.1007/s10278-004-1014-6. Epub 2004 Jun 29.

OsiriX: an open-source software for navigating in multidimensional DICOM images

Antoine Rosset  1 , Luca Spadola, Osman Ratib
Affiliations
Review

OsiriX: an open-source software for navigating in multidimensional DICOM images

Antoine Rosset et al. J Digit Imaging. 2004 Sep.

Abstract

A multidimensional image navigation and display software was designed for display and interpretation of large sets of multidimensional and multimodality images such as combined PET-CT studies. The software is developed in Objective-C on a Macintosh platform under the MacOS X operating system using the GNUstep development environment. It also benefits from the extremely fast and optimized 3D graphic capabilities of the OpenGL graphic standard widely used for computer games optimized for taking advantage of any hardware graphic accelerator boards available. In the design of the software special attention was given to adapt the user interface to the specific and complex tasks of navigating through large sets of image data. An interactive jog-wheel device widely used in the video and movie industry was implemented to allow users to navigate in the different dimensions of an image set much faster than with a traditional mouse or on-screen cursors and sliders. The program can easily be adapted for very specific tasks that require a limited number of functions, by adding and removing tools from the program's toolbar and avoiding an overwhelming number of unnecessary tools and functions. The processing and image rendering tools of the software are based on the open-source libraries ITK and VTK. This ensures that all new developments in image processing that could emerge from other academic institutions using these libraries can be directly ported to the OsiriX program. OsiriX is provided free of charge under the GNU open-source licensing agreement at http://homepage.mac.com/rossetantoine/osirix.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Main window of the OsiriX program providing a listing of available images in the database (upper left corner) and sets of thumbnail images of the different series (right panel), as well as a preview window of any selected sets of images (lower left corner).
Figure 2
Figure 2
General architecture of the OsiriX program showing some of the open-source components and libraries that were used.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Example of user interface customization allowing the user to drag and drop tools and functions represented by a list of icons that can be added and removed from the tool bar.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Diagram showing the simple process used for image fusion. (1) The overlay image (PET image) is selected and (2) a color scale is applied. (3) The image fusion is initiated by drag-and-drop of the PET window title bar over the CT window resulting in (4) a fused image set obtained by color blending of the two original sets. The image fusion is instantaneous and the user can continue to navigate through the whole set of fused images and apply any of the processing tools such as intensity and contrast adjustment, slice thickness adjustment, MIP and MPR.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Example of maximum intensity projection rendering of 4-dimensional data obtained by fusion of PET and CT image sets.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Integration of a video-editing jog wheel device allowing the users to rapidly navigate through multidimensional data sets. The upper buttons above the jog wheel are used to select the data dimension of the navigation function that the jog wheel applies to. The user can therefore rapidly change from 3D navigation to slice thickness adjustment to contrast and intensity adjustment without having to use on screen cursors or sliders.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Example of three dimensional multiplanar reformatting (MPR) showing the real-time navigation panel on the right allowing the user to easily navigate and position the selected reformatted slice shown in the main window. The example here shows 4-dimensional data obtained by fusion of PET and CT data.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Voge WV, Oyen WJ, Barentsz JO, et al. PET/CT: panacea, redundancy, or something in between? J Nucl Med. 2004;45(Suppl 1):15S–24S. - PubMed
    1. Flohr T, Ohnesorge B, Bruder H, et al. Image reconstruction and performance evaluation for ECG-gated spiral scanning with a 16-slice CT system. Med Phys. 2003;30:2650–2662. doi: 10.1118/1.1593637. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Salgado R, Mulkens T, Bellinck P, et al. Volume rendering in clinical practice, a pictorial review. JBR-BTR. 2003;86(4):215–220. - PubMed
    1. Kirchgeorg MA, Prokop M. Increasing spiral CT benefits with postprocessing applications. Review. Eur J Radiol. 1998;28:39–54. doi: 10.1016/S0720-048X(98)00011-4. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ligier Y, Funk M, Ratib O, et al. The OSIRIS user interface for manipulating medical images. In: Springer-Verlag, et al., editors. Picture archiving and communication system (PACS) in medicine. Evian: NATO ASI Series. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag; 1991. pp. 395–399.

MeSH terms