Software for Practical Annotation and Exchange of Virtual Anatomy

解剖的虚拟表示在解释健康和健康中的生理功能方面无处不在 疾病。虽然解剖学的计算描述依赖于基于图像的各种阵列和CAD 格式，基于网格的方法在辅助临床护理、医疗设备方面变得越来越重要 开发、添加制造和计算模拟。仅靠解剖几何学并不是 在没有适当注释的情况下必然有用。通过注解，可以描述解剖关系 器官之间的生理交互，以及元数据的封装。它还可以捕捉疾病 为诊断和预后提供相关信息。可以将属性，即生理状态指定为 可以存储对象的空间域中的字段变量。对虚拟解剖学的一个新的需求是 统一解剖学计算表示的通用和专用注释的软件 物体。软件应该包括自动注释的功能，即依赖于解剖学的分类 关系和交互式标注，这两者都提高了用户标记解剖结构的效率 物体。该软件还应促进不同格式之间的交换，以增强生物医学界的能力 具有虚拟解剖的重复使用和进一步注释。目前，存储和交换的格式 解剖学数据非常零散。许多都是为特定目的而设计的，并且仅容纳 批注容量的子集。标准提案的数量有限，大多是专门的 并等待着社区的支持。为了满足这些未得到满足的需求，我们提出了一个新的软件套件，用于 利用基于网格的表示和交换来实现虚拟解剖的实用标注和交换 支持基于图像和基于CAD的格式。该项目将通过三个具体目标来完成。第一, 将开发一个多平台软件库作为基础。第二，高级应用程序接口，一个 将开发图形用户界面和插件基础设施。这些组件将增加 软件的可用性潜力，还将提供使用插件进行扩展的能力。各种外挂- 研究人员将开发INS以支持多种解剖数据交换格式。 最后，来自肌肉骨骼、心血管和神经学领域的用例将演示 软件在广泛的生物医学学科中的普遍适用性，并精选样本数据集以指导 预期的注释和交换约定。克利夫兰诊所的调查员将担任 应用科学家团队，为软件开发提供规范并实施案例研究。 Kitware，Inc.集团将利用灵活的软件开发工作流程来交付软件组件。 免费和开源实施将确保与潜在用户和开发人员进行最大限度的互动 社区。简而言之，该项目将产生一个经过功能评估和科学验证的软件 包，以有效地工作在各种生物医学应用的虚拟解剖学。

Virtual representations of anatomy are ubiquitous for interpretation of physiological function in health and disease. While computational description of anatomy have relied on a diverse array of image-based and CAD formats, mesh-based approaches have become increasingly important to assist clinical care, medical device development, additive manufacturing, and computational simulations. Anatomical geometry alone is not necessarily useful without appropriate annotation. Annotation enables descriptions of anatomical relationships and physiological interactions between organs, and encapsulation of metadata. It can also capture disease related information for diagnosis and prognosis. Properties can be assigned, i.e., the physiological state, as a field variable across the object’s spatial domain, can be stored. An emerging need for virtual anatomy is software to unify general purpose and specialized annotation of computational representations of anatomical objects. The software should include features for automated annotation, i.e., relying on taxonomy of anatomical relationships, and for interactive annotation, both of which increase users’ efficiency to markup anatomical objects. The software should also facilitate exchange between formats to empower the biomedical community with reuse and further annotation of virtual anatomies. At the moment, formats to store and exchange anatomical data are widely fragmented. Many are designed for specific purposes and accommodate only a subset of annotation capacity. There are a limited number of standards proposals, which are mostly specialized and awaiting traction in the community. To fulfill these unmet needs, we propose a novel software suite for pragmatic annotation and exchange of virtual anatomy by leveraging mesh-based representations and supporting image- and CAD-based formats. The project will be accomplished through three specific aims. First, a multi-platform software library will be developed as a foundation. Second, a high level application interface, a graphical user interface, and a plug-in infrastructure will be developed. These components will increase the usability potential of the software and will also provide the capacity for extensions using plug-ins. Various plug- ins will be developed by the investigators to support a large variety of anatomical data exchange formats. Finally, use cases from musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, and neurological domains will demonstrate the software’s general applicability in a wide range of biomedical disciplines and curate sample data sets to guide prospective annotation and exchange conventions. The Cleveland Clinic investigators will act as the application scientist team to provide specifications for software development and to implement case studies. The Kitware, Inc. group will utilize an agile software development workflow to deliver software components. Free and open source implementation will ensure utmost engagement with the prospective user and developer communities. In a nutshell, the project will result in a functionally evaluated and scientifically validated software package to efficiently work on virtual anatomy for a diverse range of biomedical applications.