Monitoring OSPF

Hi list, I was wondering if there's a sane method to keep a realtime eye on OSPF. More specifically, getting notifications for link/state/topology/etc changes. So far all I could think of is using birdc(6) every x seconds/minutes and comparing the output with the previous run to detect changes. Possibly the (debug) log could be of service here as well, but have not yet looked into that in detail. Any pointers would be welcome. Regards, Ruben Laban