Build Requirements

Note that with the recent MITK superbuild, the only requirements on external packages are

CMake 2.8.4 or later
Qt 4.6.2 or later (for application and widget support)

Other requirements mentioned below will be automatically downloaded and built.

Compilers

Linux

gcc 4.1 through 4.4

Windows

VC8.0 (2005)
VC9.0 (2008).
Also MITK has been successfully compiled and run with the free-of-charge Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition.
MinGW (gcc 4.4.0): With MITK 0.14 onwards, MITK can be compiled with gcc 4.4.0 on Windows using MinGW. See MinGW Instructions for details.

MacOS

Building MITK for MacOS contains a detailed description.

ITK Download

We recommend to use the latest stable ITK version. Usually MITK is compatible with the latest two versions of ITK. BUILD_SHARED_LIBS must be turned ON.

Since May 2011*: MITK needs at least GDCM 2.0.14. If the ITK version you are using is not bundled with this version, you need to build it yourself (uses also CMake) and toggle ITK_USE_SYSTEM_GDCM while configuring ITK.

ITK-Download page

VTK Download

Currently, VTK version 5.2 or 5.4 is required. VTK_USE_PARALLEL, VTK_USE_HYBRID, and BUILD_SHARED_LIBS must be turned ON.

If you want to use Qt for application development, compile VTK_USE_GUISUPPORT (advanced CMake option), VTK_USE_QVTK and VTK_USE_QVTK_QTOPENGL turned ON.

VTK-Download page

CMake Download

MITK requires the latest stable CMake release.

CMake-Download page

Windows installer packages can be built using the Nullsoft scriptable install system.

GUI-Toolkits

The core MITK library is GUI-toolkit independent.

The main example application ExtApp is implemented using Qt 4.5. It is currently under heavy development, since we only recently switched to Qt 4.

Qt can be downloaded from Nokia here.

OpenCV (optional)

The Open Source Computer Vision library may be used for video playback/processing in MITK, but is completely optional! Currently, only OpenCV 2 is supported as it is built with CMake and therefore easily integrated in MITK. To use OpenCV in MITK, follow these steps:

Download OpenCV from their Website for your OS
You may compile OpenCV from source or use an installer. When building from source, there are no special options you have to set in CMake, just two things to remind:
- On Windows: Turn off "ENABLE_OPENMP" when you have built MITK without OpenMP support. If you are unsure, turn it off
- On Linux: As there were issues with AVI playback, make sure to use OpenCV with FFMPEG on Linux. Read here how to use FFMPEG with OpenCV
General installation instructions: http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/InstallGuide
(Re-)configure your MITK build: Open CMAKE and turn on MITK_USE_OPENCV. Next, let OpenCV_DIR point to the directory containing the OpenCVConfig.cmake file (should be found automatically if OpenCV was installed regularly)
Have a look into the module "OpenCVVideoSupport"

Build requirements