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October 2014
                                                                 Issue 41
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This month, we have been hard at work developing image guidance software to improve orthognathic surgery, presenting breakthroughs in social multimedia analysis at the Science of Multi-INT Workshop, and adding a new module to ITK for image analysis. We also ran the Ragnar Relay Adirondacks for a second consecutive year!  

 

Are you going to SC14? Be sure to check out our booth (#1354)! In addition, please see our event listing for details on our SC14 presentations and activities.

 

We are seeking talented, motivated, and creative individuals to fill open positions, including HPC Visualization and Data Analysis Software Developer, Biomechanical Modeling and Surgical Simulation Software Developer, Scientific Visualization Web Developer, and Technical Lead in Biomedical Image Analysis and Visualization. For a complete list of our job offerings and for more information, visit Kitware's job site.  

 

-The Kitware Communications Team

Image Guidance will Help Treat Craniofacial Anomalies & Dentofacial Deformities
 

Kitware is developing real-time image guidance to help address pressing challenges in the orthognathic surgical community. Orthognathic surgery is used to treat severe craniofacial anomalies and dentofacial deformities such as cleft lip and palate, under bites, open-bites, and sleep apnea.

  

The team will develop an intra-operative visualization technique that incorporates freehand ultrasound imaging technology and 3-D image registration techniques to assist oral maxillofacial surgeons as part of a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project funded by the National Institute Of Dental and Craniofacial Research. The project will leverage and extend best-of-breed tools including 3D Slicer, which incorporates the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) in its infrastructure.

  

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute Of Dental & Craniofacial Research of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R43DE024334. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Workshop Discussed Automated Visual Content Extraction from Social Multimedia 

 

The Science of Multi-INT (SOMI) Workshop brought together hundreds of technologists and government program managers interested in the fusion and exploration of sensor and data. Dr. Anthony Hoogs gave a presentation at the workshop entitled "Concept for Fusing Social Multimedia with Overhead Sensing for Situational Awareness in Denied Areas."  

 

Social media has become a rich source of intelligence, as it is readily available in many denied areas, widely used, and nearly instantaneous. Overhead sensing and social media are highly complementary, and fusing them would enable the corroboration or refutation of information about the same person, event, or place, or lead to new insights that would not be possible from either on its own. Promising breakthroughs in automated visual content extraction from social multimedia were described, with a framework for fusing them with NTM content to solve hard A2AD problems.

 

The presentation was well received, and the slides are available upon request. Please contact Dr. Hoogs for further information at [email protected].

Team to Tackle Shortcomings of Today's Retinal Imaging Tools

Kitware is pleased to announce a $150,000 Department of Defense (DoD) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I award for the development of a Retinal Image Management System (RIMS). Retinal damage is a debilitating condition, which, if left untreated, can lead to blindness. Retinal damage is widespread and has many causes, ranging from accidental exposure to environmental dangers to complications of disease such as diabetes.

 

RIMS will not only provide significant improvement in the study of physiological functional changes of the retina resulting from light induced damage, but it will also provide the next generation retinal pathology system for general ophthalmic medical practice. Furthermore, RIMS will simplify patient education and boost patient awareness by relating patient history and providing easy-to-understand visualizations.   

 

For the project, Kitware will collaborate with DualAlign LLC, a recognized expert in ocular registration. Dr. Wesley Turner, a Technical Leader at Kitware, will serve as the Principal Investigator, and Dr. Chuck Stewart will lead the effort at DualAlign. The goals of the Phase I effort are to design a system for the registration and analysis of multi-modality retinal images and to create a Software Development Plan (SDP), which identifies I/O formats associated with 2D and 3D imaging modalities and complementary visual function tests; delineates desirable preprocessing capabilities for noise reduction in native images; details technical approaches for image registration and data fusion; defines the graphical user interface for data management; and outlines verification procedures.

  

This material is based upon work supported by the United States Air Force under Contract No. FA8650-14-M-6558. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Air Force.   

 

The picture for this article is a montage of retinal thickness over a wide field obtained from the Zeiss Cirrus OCT and i2k Retina. It was contributed by Joe Carroll from the Wisconsin College of Medicine. 

storyCNew Module Added to ITK for Image Analysis
Module Reads Affine Transforms Stored as DICOM Spatial Registration Object Files

A new module, itk::DCMTKTransformIO, was recently added to extend the Insight Segmentation and Registration Toolkit (ITK) to read affine transforms stored as Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) Spatial Registration Object files.

The new module aids the research and clinical communities in image analysis, as it provides researchers with access to the image alignments that radiologists perform in clinics. In addition, it provides clinical practitioners with access to computational research, such as automated image registration algorithms, that can improve their workflows and quality of care.      

 

The new module was developed in collaboration with research application and standards development communities, the  3D Slicer community, and the DICOM standard community. For more information on the new module and future developments, please read "DICOM Spatial Transform IO in the Insight Toolkit." The article, which was published in the  Insight Journal, was authored by Matthew McCormick, Kevin Wang, Andras Lasso, Gregory Sharp, and Steve Pieper. The Insight Journal is an open access on-line publication covering the domain of medical image processing and visualization.

storyE5Kitware Runs in Ragnar Relay Adirondacks  
The Race Spanned Two Days and 196.2 Miles from Saratoga Springs to Lake Placid  
 

This year, Kitware once again participated in the Ragnar Relay Adirondacks. The 196.2-mile race from Saratoga Springs to Lake Placid, NY, took place from September 26 to September 27, 2014. This is Kitware's second consecutive year running the Ragnar. For the team's experience last year, please read this previously posted blog entry.

For the race, Kitware's team split up into two vans. In van one was  Lisa Avila, Jacob Becker, Dan Lipsa, Eran Swears,  Sandy McKenzie, and  Linus Sherrill's wife, Marilyn. In van two was Bill Hoffman, Matt Turek, Jake Stookey, and Bill's son, Max.

After a total of 27 hours, 59 minutes, and 57.8 seconds, Kitware finished the race at the Lake Placid Horse Show Grounds. Out of 296 total racers, Kitware placed 42 overall and 26 in the Regular Mixed Open Category. The team had a great time, and everyone finished without injury!