CTK Integration Levels Overview

CTK supports the common use of medical imaging software developments on different levels (not all of these levels are available yet). This ranges from loosely coupled applications (level 1: basically data exchange) to more and more tight integration (level 2: parameter exchange; level 3: exchange of events; level 4: exchange of services; level 5: complete integration).

	CTK benefit for Host	CTK benefit for App/Module
Level 1: DICOM Supplement 118 (Scenarios, Details)	Host communication Data preparation for DataExchange interface Default implementation of host business logic	Application communication Default implementation of application business logic
Level 2: Command line interface (Scenarios, not yet available within CTK)	parsing of parameter descriptions GUI generation (optional)	publishing of parameter descriptions
Level 3: CTK event bus (Scenarios, Details)	publish and subscribe for arbitrary communication between modules and applications possibly out of process
Level 4: CTK services (Scenarios, Details)	Component-based software development Service discovery Base services: event bus, configuration admin, logging, meta type management
Level 5: “Classic” C++ (Scenarios)	DICOM Q/R (ctkDICOMAppWidget, ctkDICOMServerNodeWidget) Local DICOM file management (indexer, database …) (ctkDICOMModel) DICOM testing infrastructure Qt widgets for DICOM, Medical Imaging applications … (Image Gallery, Plans) Scripting support (ctkPythonShell) Application launcher