CAVASS: a computer-assisted visualization and analysis software system - image processing aspects

Abstract

The development of the concepts within 3<i>DVIEWNIX</i> and of the software system 3<i>DVIEWNIX</i> itself dates back to the 1970s. Since then, a series of software packages for Computer Assisted Visualization and Analysis (<i>CAVA</i>) of images came out from our group, 3<i>DVIEWNIX</i> released in 1993, being the most recent, and all were distributed with source code. <i>CAVASS</i>, an open source system, is the latest in this series, and represents the next major incarnation of 3<i>DVIEWNIX</i>. It incorporates four groups of operations: IMAGE PROCESSING (including <i>ROI</i>, interpolation, filtering, segmentation, registration, morphological, and algebraic operations), VISUALIZATION (including slice display, reslicing, <i>MIP</i>, surface rendering, and volume rendering), MANIPULATION (for modifying structures and surgery simulation), ANALYSIS (various ways of extracting quantitative information). <i>CAVASS</i> is designed to work on all platforms. Its key features are: (1) most major <i>CAVA</i> operations incorporated; (2) very efficient algorithms and their highly efficient implementations; (3) parallelized algorithms for computationally intensive operations; (4) parallel implementation via distributed computing on a cluster of PCs; (5) interface to other systems such as <i>CAD/CAM</i> software, <i>ITK</i>, and statistical packages; (6) easy to use <i>GUI</i>. In this paper, we focus on the image processing operations and compare the performance of CAVASS with that of <i>ITK</i>. Our conclusions based on assessing performance by utilizing a regular (6 MB), large (241 MB), and a super (873 MB) 3D image data set are as follows: <i>CAVASS</i> is considerably more efficient than <i>ITK</i>, especially in those operations which are computationally intensive. It can handle considerably larger data sets than <i>ITK</i>. It is easy and ready to use in applications since it provides an easy to use<i> GUI</i>. The users can easily build a cluster from ordinary inexpensive PCs and reap the full power of <i>CAVASS</i> inexpensively compared to expensive multiprocessing systems which are less efficient for <i>CAVA</i> operations.