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 Builder ™ tool from Siemens Corporate Research to create the app’s scene graph and processing pipelines from XIP Libraries ™An 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 ™ The XIP™ Builder Tool An 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 graph 12/5/20086Lawrence Tarbox, Ph.D.

Add GUI and Housekeeping Logic Application Developer controls the scene graph by creating a GUI program (e.g. via Java Swing)Application Developer controls the scene graph by creating a GUI 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, PCInternet ServerCommercial Vendor #2 … Commercial Vendor #1 XIP developed Application 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 offers DICOM Application Hosting APIs

DICOM Application Hosting General 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 DICOM Supplement 118 “Application Hosting” can be downloaded from Please feel free to me at if you have questions If you want a demo at the 2010 caBIG ® Annual Meeting, call me at