The Medical Imaging Interaction Toolkit (MITK) is a free and versatile open-source software project for the development of medical image processing applications. It can be used as a C++ toolkit or application framework for software development. Below you can find documentation targeting different usage scenarios:
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You may want to use MITK as an application
You may want to use the MITK Workbench as an end user and will find user manuals in MITK User Manual and MITK Plugin Manuals.
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You may want to develop your own software framework, and use some of MITK's data structures and algorithms
You may want to use MITK as a toolkit and probably benefit most from the Build Instructions and MITK API Documentation.
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You may want to use the MITK and BlueBerry software framework to develop your own software
Here you have again two options:
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You may want to use the MITK Workbench and extend its capabilities
You may want to use MITK as a software framework and writing your own modules and plugins for MITK. You may want to read the Build Instructions and Starting your MITK Development. Also, you might want to take a look at our CMake FAQ.
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You may want to create your own application based on MITK
This is probably the most common way to use MITK. You may want to use MITK as a software framework and build your own project and application using MITK. You may want to read Creating a new MITK project and the general information in Starting your MITK Development. Also, you might want to take a look at our CMake FAQ.
About MITK
MITK is an open-source framework that was originally developed as a common framework for Ph.D. students in the Division of Medical and Biological Informatics (MBI) of the German Cancer Research Center. MITK aims to support the development of leading-edge medical imaging software with a high degree of interaction.
MITK re-uses virtually anything from VTK and ITK. Thus, it is not a competitor to VTK or ITK at all, but an extension, which tries to ease the combination of both, and to add features not supported by VTK or ITK.
Research institutes, medical professionals and companies alike can use MITK as a basic framework for their research and even commercial (thorough code research needed) software due to the BSD-like software license.
Research institutes will profit from the high level of integration of ITK and VTK, enhanced with data management, advanced visualization and interaction functionality in a single framework that is supported by a wide variety of researchers and developers. You don't need to reinvent the wheel over and over and can concentrate on your work.
Medical Professionals will profit from MITK and MITK applications by using its basic functionalities for research projects. Nonetheless, they will be better off, unless they are programmers themselves, to cooperate with a research institute developing with MITK to get the functionality they need. MITK and MITK applications are not certified medical products and may be used in a research setting only. They must not be used in patient care.
License
Copyright (c) German Cancer Research Center.
MITK is available as free open-source software under a BSD-style license.
