[IGSTK-Developers] Application Framework Concept

[Kevin Cleary]

I like it in general, in particular the use of the word "penultimate", but I
wonder if a clinical reviewer might quibble on whether generic workflows
would always be sufficient to start with to build the application at hand

In that case, we may want to provide a more general framework but that might
not be as much of a framework 

We could always go with this approach and say the user is free to define
their own workflow as well if the generic workflows don't fit (might be a
nice sentence to put in our "potential difficulties" section)

I will plan on sending the latest version of the proposal out tonight
including what Luis has added in the introduction, what I have added in the
background, and what I have added in Aim 4

Kevin

-----Original Message-----
From: igstk-developers-bounces+cleary=georgetown.edu at public.kitware.com
[mailto:igstk-developers-bounces+cleary=georgetown.edu at public.kitware.com]
On Behalf Of Stephen R. Aylward
Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2006 2:25 PM
To: IGSTK
Subject: [IGSTK-Developers] Application Framework Concept

Hi,

I wanted to run a concept by ya'll.  Please take a second to let me know 
what you think of the following design for the application framework 
solution:  (please comment on the feasibility of the solution, no need 
to pick apart the text...yet... :) )

[SNIP]

Generating an IGSTK application at a minimum requires (1) carefully 
considering the workflow of the medical procedure and (2) implementing 
that workflow as a comprehensive set of state machine transitions that 
integrate chosen IGSTK modules.

Our analysis of several interventional radiology tasks [REF] has 
revealed that there are a few general workflow frameworks that are 
common to many interventional radiology procedures, and substituting 
appropriate modules into a workflow framework is sufficient for 
specializing a workflow for a particular procedure.

We propose to provide an application-builder program that allows a user 
to choose from a list of pre-defined workflow frameworks and to specify 
modules for the components of the chosen framework.  The 
application-builder program will then automatically generate the source 
code and CMake files needed to build that IGSTK application.

The tasks of this project are

1)	Develop a language for defining workflow frameworks as application 
templates.
2)	Develop a language for describing available IGSTK modules that can
be 
plugged into the components of a workflow template.
3)	Develop and validate a program that can load a framework and
multiple 
module definitions, accept user input to assign modules to the 
components of the framework, and generate code that implements a 
complete application.

The concept of an application-builder program is the penultimate 
embodiment of patient-safety-centric programming that has driven the 
development of IGSTK.

[SNIP]

Stephen

-- 
=============================================================
Stephen R. Aylward, Ph.D.
Chief Medical Scientist
Kitware, Inc.
http://www.kitware.com
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