AccuSoft ImageGear MD
Product overview
ImageGear MD is a medical imaging SDK for DICOM developers to build robust medical imaging applications. ImageGear MD includes comprehensive support for DICOM format such as reading, writing and flexible access to DICOM dataset. We offer broad support of different DICOM modalities, such as Computed Radiography, Magnetic Resonance, and Ultrasound, Computed Tomography, Nuclear Medicine, Secondary Capture, X-Ray Angiography, Digital X-Ray, Visible Light, Ophtalmic Photography, ECG, Hemodynamic and many more. We also offer support for 3D images, x-rays, vector (ECG or EKG) images and presentation state data.
With ImageGear MD, you get all the power of ImageGear Professional, AccuSoft’s flagship imaging SDK, such as photo imaging, support for over 100 file formats, image processing display, scanning, OCR, ICR, OMR and bar code recognition. ImageGear MD supports all current Microsoft operating systems including 32-bit and 64-bit Vista. In addition, if you develop in .NET framework, you can use ImageGear MD for .NET.
Medical Formats
DICOM is an industry standard file format and network protocol for storing, exchanging and archiving medical images. ImageGear MD support for DICOM file format includes:
- Read and write DICOM images of various modalities, transfer syntaxes (uncompressed, RLE, JPEG, JPEG2000) and bit depths
- Automatic detection and read non-Part10 compliant DICOM images
- Read and write of DICOM Presentation State objects and overlays
- Full read and write access to DICOM non-image data
- Read DICOM waveform images
Read and Write
When reading and writing DICOM image files, ImageGear MD provides the following capabilities:
- Display DICOM waveforms for ECG and HD modalities with image data set access
- Convert to and from other ImageGear supported formats
- Scan 9- to 16-bit grayscale images using TWAIN
- Support monochrome, grayscale, palletized and true color DICOM images
- Read and write both Big Endian and Little Endian byte orders
- Auto-detect DICOM images with or without a Meta-info (Part 10) header
- Read many out-of-spec images
- Read 1-bit DICOM files
- Read and write multi-frame and Cine files
- Support both Implicit VR and Explicit VR
- Read files with or without group lengths
- Load and save DICOM images without data element (DE) loss
- Preserve 16-bit grayscale pixels
- Read RGB planar images
- Read and write JPEG lossy, JPEG lossless, RLE and JPEG 2000 compressed
DICOM images
Display
When displaying DICOM image files, ImageGear MD provides the following capabilities:
- Real-time contrast adjustment using Window level, rescale, and gamma correction transforms
- Support bit depths of 8- to 16-bits per pixel
- Pseudo-coloring of entire image using either pre-defined pseudo-color schemes or your own customized LUTs
- Allow pseudo-coloring of only those pixel values that are over the high threshold, or under the low threshold (allows you to set the thresholds)
- Support for cine loop display of image sequences
Presentation State Objects
ImageGear MD includes support for Presentation State objects. These objects serve the following purposes within a DICOM file:
- Consistent display of images on various devices and media
- Storage of specific settings for display
- Storage of annotations and additional tags such as Patient/Study/Series information
Presentation State files do not contain images, but rather reference other images for which they provide the above mentioned attributes.
ImageGear provides full support for the Presentation LUT as well as the Grayscale Standard Display Function (GSDF). This allows consistent image display and contrast settings. Additionally, the Presentation State data set can be loaded and merged with the image data set.
Presentation State annotations are also supported. These include:
- Textbox
- Point
- Poly-line
- Spline
- Circle
- Ellipse
These annotations are converted into ImageGear ART objects during reading, and exported back into presentation state data during saving. Graphical objects can be filled or not. Additionally, annotations can be grouped into layers.
Image Processing
When processing medical image files, ImageGear MD provides the following capabilities:
- Convert 16-bit images to 8-bit images and vice versa
- Contrast adjustment
- Tabulate up to 16-bit histogram data
- Convert signed to unsigned pixel data
- Swap bytes of 16-bit pixels
- Support convolve matrix, sharpen, smooth, edge maps, rotate, resize, flip and crop functions for 16-bit images
- Support 16-bit images in many baseline ImageGear Image Processing API functions
- Shifting up or down of the High bit
- Return minimum and maximum pixel values from a chosen area of an
image
Data Set
When working with the data set, ImageGear MD provides the following capabilities:
- Complete API for data set creation and removal
- Complete data set access, including the modification, addition and removal of data elements
- Complete support of SQ and multiple levels
- Add customer-defined tags to the data dictionary
Annotations
The AccuSoft Redlining Toolkit (ART) component is part of ImageGear MD. It provides the ability to add annotations to a medical image, including:
- Add arrows
- Highlight the areas of interest on a medical image
- Place notes or observations onto an image
- Block out (redact) sensitive areas
Additionally, annotations can be merged with an image, or kept in a separate file and overlaid on the image at display time. In this way, the original image is never directly altered.
