Using the CustusX toolkit to create an image guided bronchoscopy application: Fraxinus.

PURPOSE: The aim of this paper is to show how a specialized planning and guidance application called Fraxinus, can be built on top of the CustusX platform (www.custusx.org), which is an open source image-guided intervention software platform. Fraxinus has been customized to meet the clinical needs in navigated bronchoscopy. METHODS: The application requirements for Fraxinus were defined in close collaboration between research scientists, software developers and clinicians (pulmonologists), and built on top of CustusX. Its superbuild system downloads specific versions of the required libraries and builds them for the application in question, including the selected plugins. New functionality is easily added through the plugin framework. The build process enables the creation of specialized applications, adding additional documentation and custom configurations. The toolkit's libraries offer building blocks for image-guided applications. An iterative development process was applied, where the clinicians would test and provide feedback during the entire process. RESULTS: Fraxinus has been developed and is released as an open source planning and guidance application built on top of CustusX. It is highly specialized for bronchoscopy. The proposed workflow is adapted to the different steps in this procedure. The user interface of CustusX has been modified to enhance information, quality assurance and user friendliness with the intention to increase the overall yield for the patient. As the workflow of the procedure is relatively constant, some actions are predicted and automatically performed by the application, according to the requirements from the clinicians. CONCLUSIONS: The CustusX platform facilitates development of new and specialized applications. The toolkit supports the process and makes important extension and injection points available for customization.

Automatic Segmentation and Probe Guidance for Real-Time Assistance of Ultrasound-Guided Femoral Nerve Blocks.

Ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia can be challenging, especially for inexperienced physicians. The goal of the proposed methods is to create a system that can assist a user in performing ultrasound-guided femoral nerve blocks. The system indicates in which direction the user should move the ultrasound probe to investigate the region of interest and to reach the target site for needle insertion. Additionally, the system provides automatic real-time segmentation of the femoral artery, the femoral nerve and the two layers fascia lata and fascia iliaca. This aids in interpretation of the 2-D ultrasound images and the surrounding anatomy in 3-D. The system was evaluated on 24 ultrasound acquisitions of both legs from six subjects. The estimated target site for needle insertion and the segmentations were compared with those of an expert anesthesiologist. Average target distance was 8.5 mm with a standard deviation of 2.5 mm. The mean absolute differences of the femoral nerve and the fascia segmentations were about 1-3 mm.