How to develop an Osirix Plugin - part 2: ITK

This time we want to use basic ITK filtering in our plugin.

Part 1

  1. For testing purposes use the code from the bottom of the page. The file has to have .mm extention (Typical error: Lexical or Preprocessor Issue 'iostream' file not found).
  2. Get ITK. This time we are going to use ITK version used in Osirix and provided in Osirix code.
    • Get Osirix code from Osirix github repository to <your_osirix_path>
    • In Osirix xcode project select Unzip Binaries as a target to build. Run it. In <your_osirix_path>. ITK180 dir should appear.
    • In terminal go to <your_plugin_dir>. create a symbolic link to ITK180 dir:
      ln -s <your_osirix_path>/ITK180
  3. Confiugere your project
    • in Build Settings fill Header Search Paths with the paths below. (otherwise you will get Lexical or Preprocessor Issue 'itkImage.h' file not found is the error you might get).
      ITK180/Modules/Core/Common
      ITK180/Modules/Core/Common/include
      ITK180/Modules/ThirdParty/VNL/src/vxl/vcl
      ITK180/Modules/ThirdParty/VNL/src/vxl/core
      ITK180/Modules/Filtering/Thresholding/include
    • in Build Settings change C++ Language Dialect to C++14 (otherwise you will get error: unknown type name 'constexpr').
  4. You should be able to compile it. It should run correctly.

Part 2

As you work with this configuration, you might get to a problem, for example if you add 'ITK180/Modules/Numerics/Optimizers/include' to Header search path and you use code like one below:

#include "itkLBFGSOptimizer.h"
typedef itk::LBFGSOptimizer OptimizerType;
...
OptimizerType::Pointer optimizer = OptimizerType::New();

Plugin will compile but we get Symbol not found: itk14LBFGSOptimizer error. To solve it:

  1. In Build Phases add ITK libraries from folder (see picture). You can move them to a suitable group in XCode navigator.
  2. In Build Settings remove -undefined dynamic lookup from other linker flags
  3. In Build Settings add Osirix binary path (mine is /Applications/OsiriX Lite.app/Contents/MacOS/OsiriX) to let the linker know where it should look for the Osirix symbols.v

To better understand the problem, see the linker manual and Brian’s explanation in ProjectConfiguration.pdf.

Code

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