Seminar 2007 04 25 David Gobbi IGT Framework

From CISSTwiki

CISST ERC Seminar
A VTK/Python Framework for Image Guided Therapies

Date: Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Time: 12:00pm
Place: Maryland 110 (Lunch will be served)

Speaker: David Gobbi, PhD
VP and CEO, Atamai Inc.
Title: A VTK/Python Framework for Image Guided Therapies
Presentation: PDF, not yet uploaded

Abstract

When VTK first attracted the attention of the medical imaging community in 1997, it was praised for its versatility and power. Unfortunately, it also had its faults, in particular its steep learning curve and inefficient image display pipeline. It was not without trepidation that we chose it as the basis for our interactive image-guided surgery platform at the Robarts Research Institute, but after some enhancements, it proved to be ideal. Through the use of the Python scripting language and the development of high-level visualization components related to image-guided therapy, we were able to leverage the abilities of students with little previous programming experience in the development of new applications, including pre-operative planning for epilepsy surgery, nonlinear image registration for the creation of a functional atlas of the deep brain for Parkinson's surgery, 3D ultrasound guidance for tumor section, and minimally invasive cardiac surgery.

Bio

David Gobbi is VP and CEO of Atamai Inc., a medical visualization software company that he co-founded. In addition to running Atamai, he holds a contracted position as a programmer on the NIH Image-Guided Surgery Toolkit project, was the lead developer of the ORDCF OCCIviewer project, and has contributed several key features to VTK over the years. David received his PhD in Medical Biophysics from the University of Western Ontario in 2003 as an advisee of Terry Peters.

Atamai Inc. was founded by Yves Starreveld, David Gobbi, Kirk Finnis, and Terry Peters in April, 2000 and is located in London, Ontario. Its goal is to enable the commercialization of scientific research projects by maintaining a collection of open-source medical visualization tools and by providing consulting services to both the public and private sectors.