Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
browsers in linux, Windows and Mac OS X. It is currently tested on Firefox and
Google Chrome with Opera and Safari also supporting the npruntime technology it
uses. Implementation for Microsoft Internet Explorer is not yet planned but would
require use of different technology to bind to the cmgui API and rendering code.
Zinx
is a javascript library that provides easy methods for loading and rendering
models through Zinc. This allows the rapid development of web pages for displaying
and interacting with cmgui models. Rich interfaces can be developed with the use
of other javascript libraries like jQuery for HTML interaction and jQuery UI for
advanced effects and widgets. Zinx is currently based on the old version of Zinc, but
once updated its users should be seamlessly migrated.
8.8 GIMIAS
GIMIAS (Graphical Interface for Medical Image Analysis and Simulation) is a soft-
ware framework designed to be an integrative tool for fast prototyping of medical
applications
13
. It is a workflow-oriented environment for advanced biomedical im-
age computing and simulations, and it can be extended through the development of
problem-specific plug-ins.
GIMIAS is particularly tailored to integrate tools from medical imaging, com-
putational modelling (e.g. openCMISS) and computer graphics to provide scientific
developers and researchers with a software framework for building a wide variety of
tools. Multi-modal image processing, personalised model creation, numerical sim-
ulation and visualisation of simulation results are some of the possible applications
for which GIMIAS has been designed. The aim of the framework is to combine tools
from different areas of knowledge providing a framework for multi-disciplinary re-
search and clinical study.
GIMIAS allows building medical prototypes for clinical evaluation, in the areas
of medical image analysis, modelling and simulation. It simplifies the integration of
tools needed to build new clinical workflows, and the use of common libraries for
user interfaces, visualisation, image processing, DICOM access, etc, that are com-
monly used as standard in Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) research.
The prototypes developed on GIMIAS can be verified by end users in real scenar-
ios and with real data at early development stages, thus reducing the time and effort
required to get new concepts from research to the clinical environment.
GIMIAS provides a graphical user interface with all main data IO, visualisation
and interaction functions for images, meshes and signals. It includes additional tools
for image segmentation, mesh editing, signal navigation and specific visualisations. It
also provides a simple Application Programming Interface (API) that allows devel-
opers to create their own tools as plug-ins that can be dynamically loaded and com-
bined in different ways to create their own customized medical applications. The
GIMIAS API provides developers with standard services such as rendering, data
access and advanced visualisation of multi-modal imaging data, among others.
13
GIMIAS is released under a BSD license.
