RTK wiki help

Welcome to RTK

The Reconstruction Toolkit (RTK) is an open-source and cross-platform software for fast circular cone-beam CT reconstruction based on the Insight Toolkit (ITK). RTK is developed by the RTK consortium. This is the wiki documentation, other information is available here:

Main website

Project

Resources

Contact us

RTK is an open source C++ library, not an executable. This means that you must write code that uses RTK and compile it before you will obtain something that you can run and get a result from. It also means that you can adapt or extend RTK to address your problem at hand. To facilitate this over multiple operating systems, compilers, and system configurations, RTK itself must be built from its source code. RTK is based on The Insight Toolkit, therefore you would need to get, configure and compile The Insight Toolkit first.

The three steps to starting to work with RTK are therefore:

1. Download and Build the ITK source
2. Download/Obtain/Get the RTK source
3. Build the RTK library
4. Write your own code that uses RTK and build it, linking to the RTK library.

In the next sections we describe each of these steps.

Requirements

In order to compile RTK you will need the following:

• GIT (in order to get the software)
• CMake (in order to configure RTK)
• C/C++ compiler

Step 0 - Getting ITK

RTK currently uses ITK 3.20 or ITK 4.30.

We recommend to look into the ITK wiki in order to compile ITK for your system. The documentation for ITK should be fairly straight forward. Moreover, the concepts for building ITK are very similar to those for RTK. In order to get ITK 3.20 from git:

 git clone git://itk.org/ITK.git ITK
 cd ITK
 git checkout release-3.20

Or ITK 4.30:

 git clone git://itk.org/ITK.git
 cd ITK
 git checkout v4.3.0

Once ITK source code is downloaded you need to configure and generate the CMake files:

 mkdir ITK-bin
 cd ITK-bin
 ccmake ../ITK

One important CMake option to make sure is enabled if you are using ITK 3.20 is the ITK_USE_REVIEW which should be set to ON when running CMake on ITK 3.20:

 ITK_USE_REVIEW ON

If you are using ITK 4.3.0 make sure ITK_BUILD_ALL_MODULES is ON to be sure that you have everything required:

 ITK_BUILD_ALL_MODULES ON

Note that you do not need to build the examples, the documentation or any of the tests to use ITK with RTK. You can set them off in order to speed up the process with the following flags:

 BUILD_DOCUMENTATION OFF
 BUILD_EXAMPLES OFF
 BUILD_TESTING OFF 

After generating your CMake files you are ready to start the compilation process, run:

 make

Step 1 - Getting RTK

This page documents how to download RTK through Git. Follow the ITK Git download instructions to install Git.

To get the latest source code for RTK:

 git clone git://github.com/SimonRit/RTK.git

Step 2 - Building RTK

Like ITK, in order to build RTK you would need to install [CMake www.cmake.org]. CMake supports out of source build so we recommend to create a binary directory 'RTK-bin'

 mkdir RTK-bin
 cd RTK-bin
 ccmake ../RTK

When CMake asks for the ITK_DIR, specify the binary directory where ITK is built and choose CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE (default: Release),

 ITK_DIR /path_to_directory/ITK-bin
 CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE Release

Finally, after configuring and generating your CMake files, you can start the compilation running the following command:

 make

Step 3 - Running the HelloWorld application

In order to verify the installation of your RTK library, you can run the HelloWorld application. This application is part of the RTK examples and should be built by default. Otherwise make sure that

 BUILD_EXAMPLES ON

when configuring RTK with CMake.

Tutorials

Tutorial 0 - Building an HelloWorld application with RTK

RTK is a library, therefore it's meant to be integrated into application. This tutorial shows how to create a simple HelloWorld project that links with RTK. The source code for this tutorial is located in RTK/examples/HelloWorld.

• First you need to create a CMakeLists.txt with the following lines:

 # This project is designed to be built outside the RTK source tree.
 PROJECT(HelloWorld)

 # Find the RTK libraries and includes
 FIND_PACKAGE(RTK REQUIRED)
 INCLUDE(${RTK_USE_FILE})

 # Executable
 ADD_EXECUTABLE(HelloWorld HelloWorld.cxx )
 TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES(HelloWorld ${RTK_LIBRARIES})
 TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES(HelloWorld ${ITK_LIBRARIES})

• Create a HelloWorld.cxx file

 #include <rtkFDKBackProjectionImageFilter.h>

 int main(int argc, char **argv)
 {
 // Define the type of pixel and the image dimension
 typedef float OutputPixelType;
 const unsigned int Dimension = 3;

 // Define the type of image
 typedef itk::Image< OutputPixelType, Dimension > OutputImageType;

 // Define and allocate the FDK Back Projection Filter
 typedef rtk::FDKBackProjectionImageFilter<OutputImageType, OutputImageType> BPType;
 BPType::Pointer p = BPType::New();

 std::cout << "RTK Hello World!" << std::endl;

 return 0;
 }

• Run CMake on the HelloWorld directory and create a HelloWorld-bin
• Configure and build the project using your favorite compiler
• Run the HelloWorld application. If everything runs correctly you should see "RTK Hello World!" written on the console.

Tutorial 1 - My first reconstruction

Reconstruct a Sphere

Applications

RTK also provide a set of command line applications that are compiled if the cmake option BUILD_APPLICATIONS is turned on. Each application uses [gengetopt] to allow parsing of the command line options. The manual of each application can be obtained with the --help or -h option. They can be executed sequentially in bash scripts.

Script 1 - FDK

FDK Shepp Logan

Script 2 - Forward Projection

POPI projections and reconstruction

Script 3 - Ray Box Intersection

RayBox projections and reconstruction

Script 4 - Draw Geometric Phantom

Creation of a 3D geometric phantom

Script 5 - Amsterdam Shroud Image

Creation of an Amsterdam Shroud image

Script 6 - Reconstruction of Elekta Data

Reconstruct Elekta Data

Script 7 - Reconstruction of Varian Data

Reconstruct Varian Data

Geometry

The description of the 3D circular geometry is based on the international standard IEC 61217 which has been designed for cone-beam imagers on isocentric radiotherapy systems, but it can be used for any 3D circular trajectory. The fixed coordinate system of RTK and the fixed coordinate system of IEC 61217 are the same. A clear understanding of the geometry is essential for the use of a tomography package. The geometry description has been written in a latex document compiled here.

ImagX geometry

We provide as an example of geometry conversion the File:GeometryImagX.pdf specifications of the geometry used by the ImagX project (IBA/UCL) with the File:GeometryImagX.txt script file developed in Maxima to do the conversion.

Developer's corner

Developer's documentation

We only provide the doxygen documentation at the moment.

Coding style

RTK is based on ITK and aims at following its coding conventions. Any developer should follow these conventions when submitting new code or contributions to the existing one. We strongly recommend you to read thoroughly ITK's style guide.

Testing

• The RTK dashboard is available at RTK Dashboard
• Documentation on how to add datasets for testing (MIDAS+CDash)

Citations

The following articles have used and cited RTK:

• Rit, S.; Dedes, G.; Freud, N.; Sarrut, D. & Létang, J. Filtered backprojection proton CT reconstruction along most likely paths Med Phys, AAPM, 2013, 40, 031103
• [dx.doi.org/10.1088/0031-9155/58/6/1809 Martin, J.; McClelland, J.; Yip, C.; Thomas, C.; Hartill, C.; Ahmad, S.; O'Brien, R.; Meir, I.; Landau, D. & Hawkes, D. Building motion models of lung tumours from cone-beam CT for radiotherapy applications Phys Med Biol, Centre for Medical Image Computing, University College London WC1E 6BT, UK., 2013, 58, 1809-1822]