Integration of a real-time video grabber component with the open source image-guided surgery toolkit IGSTK

The image-guided surgery toolkit (IGSTK) is an open source C++ library that provides the basic components required for developing image-guided surgery applications. While the initial version of the toolkit has been released, some additional functionalities are required for certain applications. With increasing demand for real-time intraoperative image data in image-guided surgery systems, we are adding a video grabber component to IGSTK to access intraoperative imaging data such as video streams. Intraoperative data could be acquired from real-time imaging modalities such as ultrasound or endoscopic cameras. The acquired image could be displayed as a single slice in a 2D window or integrated in a 3D scene. For accurate display of the intraoperative image relative to the patient's preoperative image, proper interaction and synchronization with IGSTK's tracker and other components is necessary. Several issues must be considered during the design phase: 1) Functions of the video grabber component 2) Interaction of the video grabber component with existing and future IGSTK components; and 3) Layout of the state machine in the video grabber component. This paper describes the video grabber component design and presents example applications using the video grabber component.