CTK-CAS Tutorial

For efficient application development in computer-assisted surgery (CAS), frameworks, such as IGSTK, MITK or CISST, are used. They provide reusable methods and code skeletons to simplify development, but their extensive character represents a not neglectable overhead in their familiarization period. This is also true if one want to use only specific parts of the framework. CTK is a lightweight open-source toolkit for the biomedical field that offers a service-based plugin-framework. The design of the CTK framework enables the creation of modular CAS applications. So far, there have been only a few comprehensive tutorials of the CTK toolkit on the internet. We introduce a demo application that can be used as a template for standard navigation. In this demo, the CTK plugin framework, a central part of the common toolkit, is discussed and explained in detail. This reduces the familiarization period for CAS application development. In addition, created plugins/modules can be reused easily.