Kitware held a contest to find the best biomedical visualization made using the freely-available, open-source Insight Toolkit or Visualization Toolkit. Judging for this contest commenced at the the 11th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, held September 6 - 10, 2008 in New York City, USA.

Fourteen judges met in New York City, reviewed each of the sixty submissions twice, and then rated their favorites in terms of scientific significance, use of ITK/VTK, and aesthetics.

  • The first place award was $750 and a Kitware polo shirt
  • The second place award was $250 and a Kitware polo shirt

To view all 61 contest entries, please visit the contest website. And the winners are...

Honorable Mention

Tumoral Adenopathy
tumoral adenopathy

This image is a fused PET-CT image. It clearly demonstrates a tumoral adenopathy in the axillary region: the origin of the tumor is a malign melanoma.

Role of ITK/VTK: Rigid registration was performed through the ITK engine in OsiriX. 3D image was rendered with OsiriX through the VTK volume rendering engine.

Authors: Joris Heuberger
Institution: University Hospitals of Geneva

Second Place

Brain Connectivity and Tumor Visualization for Radiosurgery

Contrast enhanced CT (with the stereotactic frame of a gamma-knife device), anatomical MRI and diffusion tensor MRI have been registered and segmented to produce this image. Fiber tracking allows us to examine brain connectivity. Neurosurgeons use such fused views to determine tumor margins and surgical paths.

Role of ITK/VTK: This image was generated using 3D Slicer.  In particular, 3D Slicers' affine registration module, DTI fiber tracking module, and connected component segmentation module were used.   All of these modules are built using VTK and ITK and are available as open-source as part of the 3D Slicer distribution.

Authors: Andras Jakab
Institution: University of Debrecen, Medical School and Health Science Center, Hungary

First Place

Computer-Assisted Pediatric Surgery for a Baby with Vascular Anomaly and Pulmonary Sequestration

Vascular anomaly and pulmonary sequestration diagnosis using IRCAD software applications on a thoracic CT-scan of a 1 month baby with direct volume rendering (first line) and surface rendering resulting from organ segmentations (second line) in anterior view (left) and posterior view (right). The resulting preoperative surgical planning allows to reach arteries and the lung area to be cut with an optimal back intercostal tool positioning that is perfectly reproduced intraoperatively (last line).

Role of ITK/VTK: Image segmentation is done using ITK (morphological mathematics, topological, geometrical and textural operators) included in IRCAD 3DVPM software. VTK is used by IRCAD VR-Render software (www.ircad.fr/software) for direct volume rendering (3D texturing with vtkVolumeTextureMapper3D). These software applications work with other Open Source systems like wxWidgets (for GUI), gdcm/dcmtk (for loading DICOM), vtkinria3d, vgSDK or boost.

Corresponding Author: Luc Soler
Authors: François Becmeur (MD), Jacques Marescaux (MD) and Luc Soler (PhD)
Institution: IRCAD, University Hospital of Strasbourg

Kitware would like to thank the following community members for helping to make this contest possible:

  • Stephen Aylward
  • Zohara Cohen
  • Herve Delingette
  • Michael Fitzpatrick
  • Nico Karssemeijer
  • Dimitri Metaxas
  • Marc Niethammer
  • Sebastien Ourselin
  • Terry Peters
  • Jens Rittscher
  • Patrick Reynolds
  • Martin Styner
  • Gabor Szekely
  • Janet Wallace
  • Simon Warfield
  • William (Sandy) Wells
  • Hua Yang
  • Terry Yoo

Given the amazingly positive response we've received from submitters, judges, MICCAI and others, we are certain to have a contest like this again soon! We look forward to your participation.