Properties#

MITK objects carry typed key/value metadata called properties. Examples: DICOM tags on an image, rendering hints, segmentation labels, arbitrary user data. The bindings expose properties as a Pythonic mapping on objects that implement IPropertyOwner (notably mitk.Image).

Basic usage#

img.properties["DICOM.PatientName"] = "Doe^John"
img.properties["my.custom.key"] = 42

print(img.properties["DICOM.PatientName"])
print(list(img.properties))            # all keys
print(len(img.properties))             # number of properties
print("DICOM.PatientName" in img.properties)

del img.properties["my.custom.key"]

Reading delegates to get_property(), which returns Python-native values (str, bool, int, float, an (r, g, b) tuple for colors, or a mitk.BaseProperty for unknown types). Writing delegates to set_property(), which raises mitk.PropertyNotOwnedError for read-only (provided but not owned) properties.

Owned vs. provided#

A property can be owned (writable on this object) or provided (visible but read-only, typically inherited from somewhere else). Reading works for both; writing or deleting only works for owned properties.

img.property_is_owned("DICOM.PatientName")    # True / False

Trying to write to a provided property raises:

try:
    img.properties["read.only.key"] = "value"
except mitk.PropertyNotOwnedError as exc:
    print(exc)

Thread safety#

PropertyView provides no synchronization. If properties are modified concurrently (for example from a C++ background thread), keys obtained during iteration may become stale before they are used. Callers that need a consistent snapshot should copy the view into a dict:

snapshot = dict(img.properties.items())

Property key paths#

For nested or namespaced keys, mitk.PropertyKeyPath and mitk.DICOMTagPath provide structured key representations. PropertyKeyPath takes a single element and is extended with / (like pathlib.Path), [n] for an indexed selection, or ["*"] for a wildcard:

path = mitk.PropertyKeyPath("DICOM") / "PatientName"
img.set_property(str(path), "Doe^John")

dicom_path = mitk.DICOMTagPath(0x0010, 0x0010)  # (group, element)

Lower-level API#

The mapping is implemented by mitk.property_view.PropertyView. The mapping interface (__getitem__, __setitem__, __delitem__, __contains__, __iter__, __len__) covers most use cases. For lower-level access, get_property(), set_property(), remove_property(), and property_keys are exposed directly on the object.

Properties

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