Medical Imaging Interaction Toolkit  2016.11.0
Medical Imaging Interaction Toolkit
Interaction Related Examples in MITK

How to disable/re-enable/modify Display Interaction using Microservices

Display Interaction is implemented as EventObservers that are registered as Microservices. This allows them to be queried and modified from anywhere in the code. Application scenarios are e.g. wanting to disable certain interaction during a task, to avoid any conflicting actions, or to adapt the behavior to a special tool that is selected. One example in the MITK Workbench are the measurement tools. They are designed to operate on a single slice, such that we do not want the user to scroll or move the cross-hair once he started a measurement. Once he finished the measurement the usual interaction should be restored. The following code demonstrates how this is done.

To change the mitk::DisplayInteractors behavior, we first need to set up MicroService capabilities in the module by adding:

Furthermore, following includes are needed for the code snipped to work:

// Header
// Source

The first code snipped queries the us for the DisplayInteractor and then exchanges its configuration for a minimal version, that does not allow scrolling or cross-hair actions. The original configuration is stored in a member that allows restoration of the original behavior once we're done with our action.

m_DisplayInteractorConfigs.clear();
std::vector<us::ServiceReference<mitk::InteractionEventObserver> > listEventObserver = us::GetModuleContext()->GetServiceReferences<mitk::InteractionEventObserver>();
for (std::vector<us::ServiceReference<mitk::InteractionEventObserver> >::iterator it = listEventObserver.begin(); it != listEventObserver.end(); ++it)
{
mitk::DisplayInteractor* displayInteractor = dynamic_cast<mitk::DisplayInteractor*>(
if (displayInteractor != NULL)
{
// remember the original configuration
m_DisplayInteractorConfigs.insert(std::make_pair(*it, displayInteractor->GetEventConfig()));
// here the alternative configuration is loaded
displayInteractor->SetEventConfig("DisplayConfigMITKLimited.xml");
}
}

To restore the old configuration, query the DisplayInteractor again and then restored the saved configuration:

for (std::map<us::ServiceReferenceU, mitk::EventConfig>::iterator it = m_DisplayInteractorConfigs.begin();
it != m_DisplayInteractorConfigs.end(); ++it)
{
if (it->first)
{
mitk::DisplayInteractor* displayInteractor = static_cast<mitk::DisplayInteractor*>(
if (displayInteractor != NULL)
{
// here the regular configuration is loaded again
displayInteractor->SetEventConfig(it->second);
MITK_INFO << "restore config";
}
}
}
m_DisplayInteractorConfigs.clear();

Member declaration:

// holds configuration objects that have been deactivated
std::map<us::ServiceReferenceU, mitk::EventConfig> m_DisplayInteractorConfigs;