1. Features

1.1. Overview

This module is designed to enable direct communication between ROS 2 and 3D Slicer.

This module currently supports ROS 2 topics (subscribers and publishers), tf2 (broadcasters and lookups) as well as a parameter client (no server yet).

This module can also be used to visualize a ROS robot in action using a parameter client and tf2 lookups. The robot visualization implementation is following the ROS logic, i.e. the robot description (URDF) is retrieved as a parameter and the real-time link positions are from Tf2. As for RViz, for each robot, you will need a robot_state_publisher node that will:

  • provide an URDF robot description using a ROS parameter robot_description

  • update the links positions and broadcast them to tf2

All the functionalities in this module are encapsulated in vtkMRMLNode so you use them in your own applications. Since Slicer automatically provides a Python interface for all classes derived from vtkMRMLNode, you can develop your application using either C++ or Python.

1.2. Acknowledgment

The initial core developers are:

  • Laura Connolly, EE PhD student at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

  • Aravind S. Kumar, CS Masters student at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

  • Anton Deguet, Associate Research Engineer at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

This project is supported by:

  • The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bio-engineering of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) under award number R01EB020667, and 3R01EB020667-05S1 (MPI: Tokuda, Krieger, Leonard, and Fuge). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

  • The National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Walter C. Sumner Memorial Award, the Mitacs Globalink Award and the Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement.

1.3. Publications

  • Connolly L, Deguet A, Leonard S, Tokuda J, Ungi T, Krieger A, Kazanzides P, Mousavi P, Fichtinger G, Taylor RH. Bridging 3D Slicer and ROS2 for Image-Guided Robotic Interventions. Sensors (Basel). 2022 Jul 17;22(14):5336. doi: 10.3390/s22145336. PMID: [35891016]; PMCID: [PMC9324680].