If you want to help healthcare professionals make better decisions faster, consider LEADTOOLS. With LEAD Technologies’ LEADTOOLS family of imaging toolkits, you can easily integrate raster, document, medical, multimedia and vector imaging into your applications.

“Developers are using LEADTOOLS to add powerful imaging features to their applications,” said Otis Goodwin, manager of Developer Support at LEAD Technologies. “They trust us to provide outstanding support and new versions that take advantage of current and emerging programming platforms.”

For more than 20 years, LEAD Technologies has been recognized as the premier provider of digital imaging development tools. Its award-winning products span an unmatched number of imaging technologies, so developers can get all the tools and support they need from a single vendor.

LEADTOOLS toolkits support more than 150 file formats, including raster and searchable PDF, TIFF, FAX, JPEG, JPEG2000, EXIF, PNG, GIF, Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM), and other popular formats. The toolkits also support image compression, image processing, document cleanup, optical character recognition (OCR), barcode, forms recognition and processing, color conversion, image display, annotations, scanning and capture, special effects, common dialogs, and printing.

“Our customers range from independent contractors to Fortune 500 corporations,” said Goodwin. “We offer low-level APIs for developers with specific needs as well as high-level, customizable frameworks that can be used to create full-featured applications in only a few days.”

LEADTOOLS Medical Imaging SDKs Save Time and Resources
The LEADTOOLS Medical Imaging SDK v17 is ideal for developing robust medical imaging applications. It features comprehensive DICOM dataset support, 8–16 bit extended grayscale imaging support, image annotation, specialized medical image processing, and specialized extended grayscale image display such as window-level and look-up table (LUT) support. It also supports lossless JPEG and JPEG2000 compression, as well as signed and unsigned image data processing.

.NET developers can use the SDK to add medical imaging technology to single- or multi-threaded applications. They can also take advantage of out-of-the-box tools and components for Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), ASP.NET, Silverlight, Windows Phone, C and C++ development. The SDK includes 32- and 64-binaries as well as many broad and functionally specific demo projects with source code for C, Visual C++, VB.NET and C#.

The LEADTOOLS PACS Imaging SDK can be used to develop powerful Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) applications. It includes a Medical Web Viewer Framework, high- and low-level PACS Service Class Provider (SCP) and Service Class User (SCU) functions and controls, and DICOM PACS communication security.

LEAD Technologies has been working closely with medical institutions to create a unique set of tools for quickly building feature-rich applications. The LEADTOOLS PACS Workstation Framework is a set of OEM-ready PACS components for .NET that can be used to build full-featured PACS Workstation applications.

The LEADTOOLS PACS Workstation SDK includes a Medical Workstation Viewer, which is a state of the art end-user application currently used in the healthcare industry. Medical professionals, device manufacturers, research facilities and others can use the application to view, retrieve, store, and analyze 2D and 3D DICOM images. Because the LEADTOOLS PACS Workstation SDK includes source code, developers have complete freedom to customize and innovate.

“Developers can completely customize the functionality, capabilities, and look and feel of the Workstation, or use it as-is and ‘brand’ it with their own logo,” said Goodwin.
The LEADOOLS Medical Workstation Framework SDK includes the Medical 3D Engine, which allows the viewer to automatically reconstruct 3D volumes from 2D image slices, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) stacks. The 3D volumes enable physicians to view anatomical details that are unavailable with 2D slices alone.

Charlotte Eye Ear Nose and Throat Associates (CEENTA) recently created a specialized ear, nose and throat (ENT) viewer that is now used by more than 70 physicians within its 15 clinics. Using the ENT viewer, physicians can capture, view, manipulate and store CT and ultrasound images. They can also rapidly scroll through, zoom and adjust the window level of hundreds of slices, as well as exercise unprecedented control over image viewing and manipulation.

“CEENTA wanted to avoid the cost of high-priced radiology viewers,” said Goodwin. “By making minor modifications to the Medical Workstation Viewer, they were able to create a specialized viewer application at a much lower total cost of ownership.”

What’s Next from LEAD Technologies
LEAD Technologies plans to release LEADTOOLS 17.5 later this year, which will include a retooled OCR Advantage Engine, new components for reading and viewing PDFs and other documents, and a redesigned Barcode Interface, which includes support for Silverlight and Windows Phone 7. New raster formats will be added, as well as enhancements to existing features such as the Medical Viewer, Medical 3D engine and Multimedia SDK.

LEAD Technologies is also working on a new “LEADTOOLS Anywhere” initiative that will expand the LEADTOOLS Imaging SDKs out from Microsoft Windows, Silverlight, and Windows Phone 7 to other platforms, including iOS and Mac OS X, Android, Linux and HTML5.

For more information about LEAD Technologies and LEADTOOLS, visit www.leadtools.com/SD.