Dear members of the community, 

I would like to follow up on the description of BioImageSuite as usable with BrainLab, and possibly other commercial planning and navigation software. 

Is this integration robust, so that I can expect to use it with clinicians in my area who have a BrainLab system? Does it require a certain version of BrainLab? Moreover, are there other products that also are compatible with BioImageSuite, e.g.: Stryker, Medtronics, surgical robots, and so on?

Best wishes,

Michel Audette

Michel,

Good to hear from you. The current integration of BrainLAB and BioImage Suite uses OpenIGTLink (BrainLAB has moved on from the original VVLink protocol to OpenIGTLink, Slicer also has an implementation of this to talk to BrainLAB now that I helped them with 3-4 years ago). You will need to get a license on the BrainLAB end for this (which might be the harder part). Take a look at http://openigtlink.org/ to see what else implements it. We have not tested robots etc. with this to be honest, the Slicer guys may have a better handle on this stuff.) Having said all of this, we can simply give you the 100-200 lines of code that connect to BrainLAB and you can customize the stuff as you need. The connection was pretty stable.

Xenios

Dear Xenios, 

thanks for your kind reply, and my apologies for my own lateness to return to this forum. 

I would be interested in pursuing this option to adapt your BrainLab code. I am linked in with some of these guys; perhaps I can get some kind of trial license from them. 

Warm wishes,

Michel