MBAT 3.0 Architecture

The MBAT 3.0 Architecture is an extensible design built on a scalable plugin architecture. It consists of a core framework (utlity libraries and main application) and plugins (workspace and tool plugins), as shown in the figure below.

Framework

The mbat application dynamically reads and loads workspace plugins into the system. Each workspace can use the core libraries:

• mbManagerIO - Handles all Input/Output for various file formats, leveraging the IO plugins for ImageJ^?.
• mbManagerPlugin - Handles the dynamically loading of plugin class objects using the Java Plugin Framework.
• mbManagerDocking - Handles the docking of windows for the GUI using JIDE's Docking software.
• mbManagerCart - Mechanism for sharing objects between workspaces.

Plugins

The plugin architecture uses two types of plugins: (1) workspace plugins and (2) tool plugins. The workspace plugins are the high level modules that represent a conceptual workspace (ie: database search, image spatial registration, etc). The tool plugins are the tools for a particular workspace (ie: Landmark-based spatial registration). By default, mbat3.0 is distributed with 3 workspaces: search, image registration, and comparison viewer.

Both the workspace and tool plugins are extendable and customizable to fit the user's needs. For example, if the default workspaces do not provide the required functionality, a new workspace plugin can be developed. Moreover, if the user only needs to extend one part of a workspace, such as adding another image registration technique, then a new tool plugin can be developed.